History AssholeVictim / Literature

* {{Downplayed|trope}} with Alison in ''Literature/NighttimeIsMyTime''. By all accounts she was never a very pleasant person and could be ruthless as a talent agent, making a lot of enemies. At her memorial, most people aren't especially torn up by her death, with only Jean being genuinely saddened. Even then though, her murder is still presented as a horrific act and [[DisproportionateRetribution not something she deserved]]. Some characters also express distaste when others [[EveryoneHasStandards dismiss]] or [[DudeNotFunny joke]] about her death even if she was a jerk.

* ''Literature/ClublandHeroes'': Peeter Blame was a small-minded, pompous little busybody whose hobby was apparently suing almost everyone he came into contact with, and who seemed to take great pleasure in getting the law imposed as harshly as possible on people for even the mildest of infractions. Subverted, however, in that it is made abundantly clear that being a small-minded and pompous little man isn't an offence punishable by death and his personality does not make it okay for someone to dismissively beat his brains in as if he was an insignificant insect.
* In ''Literature/ThePerksOfBeingAWallflower'', Charlie's father's family were victims of domestic abuse by his grandmother's second husband. Eventually, Charlie's great-uncle Phil finds out about the situation, gathers up a group of people, and beat the husband enough that he dies sometime later in the hospital.
* The ''[[Myth/ArthurianLegend Queste del Saint Graal]]'' is one of the few works of Arthurian literature which takes note of how killing people should ''probably'' be avoided when possible. When searching for the grail, our heroes brutally kill the trio of brothers of Carteloise Castle; who, note, raped and murdered ''[[VillainousIncest their own sister]]'' and threw their ailing father in the dungeon to rot, though even then Galahad and Percival have some guilt about it. Bors justifies their actions by basically invoking this trope and that this is what God intended, but Galahad, saying that that isn’t any of their business to decide for God, still needs a second opinion from a priest to indeed be convinced that the scumbags had it coming.
** In ''Literature/LeMorteDArthur'' Gawain says that he doesn’t mind that Lancelot killed Agravain, his brother, because [[{{Jerkass}} he was kind of a dick]]. Unfortunately, he ''[[KnightTemplarBigBrother does]]'' care about his two other (full-blooded) brothers...
* In ''Literature/ABrothersPrice'', a bomb goes off in a theatre where a big part of the royal family are watching a play. While the eldest princesses are implied to be stupid and selfish, they're not evil - but their husband, Keifer, was not only an abusive husband all around, he also has raped and beaten a thirteen-year-old girl (one of his younger wives). The protagonists don't feel sorry for him, and neither does the reader.
* Bob Sheldon in ''Literature/TheOutsiders'', who is knifed to death while trying to drown the main character in a fountain.
* An interesting variant occurs in the John Varley short story "Press Enter" about a hacker who'd been secretly running the world from his computer; although nobody that knew him had any reason to hate him enough to kill him while he was still alive, his posthumous release of all the embarrassing information he'd gathered on the people around him over the years had one police officer remarking that all the townspeople sure wished they could kill him ''now''.

* Creator/AgathaChristie liked to do this as well.

* Edward in ''Literature/DragonAndDamsel''. He is hit by lightning, falls down a tower, and ends up in the hospital...after he rallied a town to storm a castle and attempted to kill a dragon he was told was intelligent and sapient, claiming it to be in the best interests of the town and Bernadette.
* ''Literature/TheHollowOnes'':
** Downplayed. Cary Peters was undoubtedly corrupt, but the narrative makes it clear that Obediah's body-jacking of him and subsequently trying to kill his whole family while in his body was something he was totally undeserving of.
** Played straighter with the Klansmen that Blackwood humiliates after they threaten Solomon.
** Hack Casby, the white lynching victim, was the head of a local chapter of the Citizen's Council, a white supremacist organization.
* ''Literature/IveGotYouUnderMySkin'':
** It becomes evident that Betsy Bonner Powell was not a pleasant woman; she was vain, greedy and selfish with a cruel streak, and enjoyed manipulating other people for her own gain. She harmed all the suspects in one way or another, and the only person who appears genuinely heartbroken by her murder is her husband. Everyone else privately thinks that it's not surprising someone whacked Betsy and they're not sorry she's dead.
** Robert Powell is fatally struck in the head with a stray bullet when the cops confront Blue Eyes (the ''other'' main antagonist). As by this point Robert had been revealed to be a dreadful person who was just as guilty as Betsy of helping ruin people's lives and was in all likelihood going to [[KarmaHoudiniWarranty get away with it]], no one is sorry he died like he did save for [[GoldDigger Muriel Craig]] (mostly because she's now lost her MealTicket).
* ''Literature/SherlockHolmes'' dealt with a couple of these.
** The most evil being Charles Augustus Milverton, who got rich by {{blackmail}}ing people (only to ruin them anyway, [[ForTheEvulz for the fun of it]]). Holmes let the murderer go, having previously expressed extreme hatred for Milverton. Of course, Holmes and Watson likely couldn't admit they witnessed the murder, as they were [[ScrewTheRulesImDoingWhatsRight burglarizing Milverton's house]] at the time.
--->'''Holmes:''' My sympathies in this case are with the criminal, not the victim.
** Holmes seems to have a tendency to let murders of spousal abusers slide. In UsefulNotes/VictorianBritain, [[OldSchoolChivalry hitting women is not okay]].
** The title character in "Black Peter" is a good example. When he's [[ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice skewered]] [[HoistByHisOwnPetard with one of his own harpoons]], nearly every one of his neighbors is glad. ''His own daughter'' explicitly tells Holmes and Watson that she's happy dear ol' dad is dead and she blesses the hand that struck him down.
** Sir Eustace Brackenstall, the victim in "The Adventure of Abbey Grange." Brackenstall was a violent drunkard who did everything from repeatedly stab his wife Lady Brackenstall with a hatpin to ''douse her dog in oil and light it on fire''. He eventually had his skull caved in by a sailor who'd fallen in love with Lady Brackenstall before she married her husband and had come to defend her from her husband's abuse. Holmes tracks down the sailor, and once he learns what really happened lets the sailor go.
** The two victims in "A Study in Scarlet" (1887) definitely qualify, being murderers themselves as well as rapists, misogynists, hedonists, and religious extremists who, in turn, abandoned said religion ([[AcceptableReligiousTargets Mormonism]]) the second it became inconvenient for them. In this case, the reader is definitely expected to side with the murderer, especially when the second half of the book is devoted to retelling the background in which his girlfriend's father was killed by one of the victims and the other forced her to marry him, leading to what was implied to be her suicide. The one who killed the two victims was arrested but died from a preexisting medical condition before ever standing trial.
** Although the murderer in "The Boscombe Valley Mystery" was by no means a particularly upstanding gentleman, this trope applies to the victim [=McCarthy=], who was a blackmailer and a ManipulativeBastard who treated his own son like a pawn.
** In "The Illustrious Client", a woman named Kitty Winter threw vitriol (concentrated sulphuric acid) on Adelbert Gruner (who could be charitably described as a serial murderer and rapist), leaving him [[FacialHorror hideously disfigured]]. The court gave her the lowest possible sentence. This story was eventually updated for ''Series/{{Elementary}}''.
** In "The Devil's Foot", Mortimer Tregennis learned from Dr. Sterndale about the titular exotic drug, which, when burned, induces crushing, irresistible terror in anyone inhaling the fumes. He then promptly stole some from the doctor and used it on his own siblings for their heritage, driving his brothers insane and killing the sister. Turned out, Dr. Sterndale was in love with said sister and got his revenge on Mortimer with a lethal dose of the same drug. After having Sterndale confess, Holmes lets him go and then comments that if he was in doctor's shoes, he'd probably do the same thing.
** In "The Solitary Cyclist," the odious Mr. Woodley takes a swing at Holmes, who [[GeniusBruiser punches his lights out]] in response, and then is shot by his accomplice, [[HeelFaceTurn who had a change of heart]].

* ''Literature/ToKillAMockingbird'': The biggest asshole is Bob Ewell. After an innocent black man is killed escaping from prison after being framed for the rape of Ewell's daughter and despite his victory over the black man's defense attorney Atticus Finch, Ewell swears revenge on Finch for exposing what a scumbag he was at the trial. In the end, he tries to murder Atticus' two children, only to get killed himself in the ensuing struggle by the reclusive Boo Radley. Even though it is obvious he died at Boo's hands, the sheriff argues with Atticus about the prudence and morals of letting this be publically known; ironically, he's certain nearly everyone's sympathies would be with Boo but thinks it would be cruel to go breaking his solitude by holding him up to everyone's ''praise and gratitude'' when Boo Radley really does just want to be left alone. Atticus eventually accepts the sheriff's story that Ewell killed himself by falling on his own knife. The extent of Ewell's assholishness is lampshaded in the novel, where it's noted that not only does he hold a grudge against everyone involved in the case, he was too much of a DirtyCoward to face those people directly. Besides Atticus, he tries to break into the home of the judge, in the middle of the night and stalks the black man's widow as she goes to work until her boss threatens to have him arrested for it. It's even implied that Ewell may have [[ParentalIncest raped his daughter]].

* In Creator/KerryGreenwood's ''Literature/PhryneFisher'' stories:
** ''Death by Water'': Nearly all of the victims of the jewel thefts aboard the S.S. ''Hinemoa'' have left victims in their wake (excepting the first woman, who was just a SpoiledBrat), generally in financial trouble: the singer abandoned her young daughter to grow up in a slum, the vindictive Mr. West sacked a young man for hanging around Mrs. West, and so on.
*** Mr. Singer kills Jack Mason's man, Thomas. Later it's revealed Thomas was on the ''Titanic'' as a steward- and many of the stewards blocked the passages on the ship so the First Class passengers could escape while condemning everyone else to die.
** ''Flying Too High'': The elder Mr. [=McNaughton=] [[DomesticAbuse sexually abused]] his wife and daughter.
** ''Murder in Montparnasse'': Hector Chambers is the target of a ransom demand for his missing daughter - he's bad-tempered and sexist, and pulls a gun on Miss Fisher several times when she figures out something without being told (he assumes she's in on it).
*** Rene abused every woman he was with, killed two innocent men, and generally defined 'bastard'.
** ''Dead Man's Chest'': Bridget, a housemaid, kills Mrs. [=McNaster=], her employer's mother-in-law- who works her companion to the bone and abuses her as much as she can. No one's upset.
** ''Murder on the Ballarat Train'': Mrs. Henderson was a terrible nag who constantly belittled her daughter. The murderer never expected the daughter to grieve for her mother, or to hire a private investigator to solve the murder.
** General Harbottle in "Overheard on a Balcony" in ''A Question of Death'': a blackmailing, wife-beating GeneralRipper who has no shortage of people willing to poison him.
* In Barry Hughart's ''Literature/BridgeOfBirds'', Li Kao needs to murder someone to carry out a plan, and he hopes to do it to someone who thoroughly deserves it. He finds one in the form of Fainting Maid who set up the deaths of her father's concubine and the soldier she loved [[IfICantHaveYou solely because she couldn't accept that he preferred another girl over her]]. When her father learns about this, he's quite happy to leave her to drown in a well.
* Nearly ''everyone'' in Creator/StephenKing's ''Literature/{{Carrie}}'' save Sue Snell (who survives). The famous scene where Carrie kills everyone at the prom is supposed to be deliberately horrifying in the book and film, but the effect is [[NightmareRetardant nullified somewhat]] when you are cheering her on. Carrie's date started out this way, but by the time the prom rolled around, he had actually grown to like her. Pity she never found that out...
** In ''Literature/BagOfBones'', primary antagonist Max Devore dies suddenly, an apparent suicide. His most direct victims celebrate his death. The rest of his town [[SinsOfOurFathers knows what really killed him and wonders which of them is next]]. Nobody mourns for his death, however.
** King's Franchise/SherlockHolmes pastiche, "The Doctor's Case" (in ''Literature/NightmaresAndDreamscapes''), features such a victim, physically abusive to his wife and psychologically abusive to her and their three sons (all adults). Just to cap it off, the victim plans to leave his wife and sons penniless when he dies (death of natural causes is mere months away and he knows it) by leaving his fortune to a cat shelter. Holmes, Watson, and Lestrade collectively agree the deceased had it coming and [[LetOffByTheDetective drop the investigation]].
* Several of Creator/EllisPeters's ''Literature/BrotherCadfael'' mysteries start with the murder of someone hated, and end with the heroes having to catch the killer before it's too late for someone we like.
** In ''The Leper of St. Giles'', a brutish and cruel nobleman is killed the day before he was to marry a much younger and not-entirely-willing lady. Curiously, but in typically compassionate Ellis Peters form, the mystery is solved with the help of someone who was the victim's friend and who saw him as a good man.
** In ''Dead Man's Ransom'', Gilbert Prestcote is severely wounded in battle and then murdered in his bed while recovering. In previous books he was set up as a hardline sheriff who was often too quick to judge, resulting in many races against time for Cadfael and Hugh Beringar to save an innocent person from punishment or keep a criminal from getting away. Subverted as while he judged quickly, he wasn't cruel and would always recant if shown evidence he was wrong. He wasn't a {{Jerkass}}, just not as good a detective as Cadfael or Hugh.
** In ''The Raven in the Foregate'', Father Ailnoth's death is mourned by nobody, after the residents and reader spend a few chapters being appalled by his cruelty. In the end, it turns out that his death was not murder, but an accident that the sole witness considered to be divine judgment.
** ''The Hermit of Eyton Forest'':
*** Drogo Bosiet is a huge brutish man chasing down an escaped villain[[note]]in the medieval sense of "bound servant" and not "bad guy"[[/note]] and beating his groom on the journey. He winds up dead.
*** Then Renaud Bourchier, alias Cuthred, a ''traitor'' to his liege who killed Drogo [[HeKnowsTooMuch for knowing too much]]. No one sheds any tears over him when a more loyal knight bumps him off.
** In ''Monk's Hood'', Gervase Bonel's actions are distinctly lacking in Christian charity, but as pointed out by Cadfael, his actions are entirely legal and proceed from a very strong sense of what is his being his. Such as holding a former villein's son in servage rather than freeing him as he'd hoped, or willing his entire property to the abbey just to spite his stepson over a disagreement.
* ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'':
** Principal Chapman is a weird example - in the main series, he's a PapaWolf who's made the ultimate sacrifice for his daughter and is regularly used as a ButtMonkey in later books. There's no indication in the main plot Chapman has any kind of karmic comeuppance coming. But in the ''Chronicles'' prequel books Chapman appears as a dangerous [[TheQuisling quisling]] who tries to offer the Yeerks Earth in exchange for his safety. This portrayal of Chapman is a stark contrast to all his other appearances, with the dissonance being so stark some fans have gone so far as to posit that the Chapman of the ''Chronicles'' books is a different character with the same name. (It's implied in the novel that the Ellimist returned him to Earth and wiped his memory of his previous encounter with the Yeerks, which may explain this.)
** [[GeneralRipper Alloran]] also fits. He firmly believed that the ends justified the means and [[HeWhoFightsMonsters committed atrocities]] in the name of stopping the Yeerks, earning the name the Butcher of the Hork-Bajir after releasing a quantum virus on their home planet to kill them all before the Yeerks could infest them. Then he himself was infested and forced to watch, unable to do anything to stop it, as his body was used to murder countless people as well as eat them alive. And he was a herbivore. JerkassWoobie, indeed.

* ''Literature/TheBrothersKaramazov'': Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov.
* Rex Stout worked with this a lot in the ''Literature/NeroWolfe'' mysteries; victims are usually at least fairly unpleasant people.
** ''Death of a Dude'' (1969): The victim had seduced a local girl, fathered a child out of wedlock, and wouldn't take any responsibility for the baby's welfare; her father, an old friend of Archie's, was arrested for murder just before the opening of the story.
** ''A Family Affair'' (1975): The first victim is attempting blackmail.
** ''In the Best Families'' (1950): The final victim is a major organized crime figure.
** The short story "Murder is Corny" (1961): The victim was a stalker and a blackmailer.
** The novella "Black Orchids" (1941): The victim was blackmailing one character and trying the ScarpiaUltimatum on another.
** The short story "Death of a Demon" takes this to a whole new level; not only is the titular victim a blackmailer, but he's also a sadist.
** In the short story "Die Like a Dog" the victim was a lecher and had the bad sense to go and taunt his victim's estranged husband about this.
** In ''Too Many Cooks'' Philip Laslzo appears to have made it his hobby to be a snide, underhanded prick to everyone who he comes across, and particularly seems to have enjoyed antagonising hot-headed, thin-skinned egotists with a fondness for vocally threatening to kill people who piss them off for whatever reason.
** Subverted in the first novel, ''Literature/FerDeLance'', in which one of the victims is almost universally described as a borderline saint who was loved and admired by everyone he met, making it almost impossible to figure out who killed him and why. [[spoiler: Double-subverted; they then realise that his death must have been a mistake, and meet the ''intended'' victim, who is a colossal dick. Things become clearer.]]
* Patricia Wentworth played with this in her Maud Silver books.
** ''Latter End'' (1947): Lois Latter (TheVamp) had married now-HenpeckedHusband James Latter for his money, and exploited all the other women in the household, in some cases just for spite. She actually died because one of the other women suspected her of tampering with James' drink, and switched the cups.
** ''Spotlight'' (1947), also known as ''Wicked Uncle'': The victim was a blackmailer; the U.S. title is due to his being the uncle of the female protagonist, who'd made his wife, her guardian, miserable throughout their marriage.
** ''Miss Silver Comes to Stay'' (1949): James Lessiter, upon finally claiming his mother's estate, begins settling ''all'' his debts (somewhat subverted in that at least two of the people with financial motives to kill him had been robbing the estate and aren't particularly sympathetic characters).
** ''The Gazebo'' (1956): The victim was MyBelovedSmother; her daughter's fiance was suspected of having finally snapped.
* This is the reason why Creator/RLStine's ''The Snowman'' doesn't necessarily work: the readers are supposed to dislike him because he's a cold-blooded killer, but his victim is a physically and emotionally abusive jerk. The victim in question has beaten his wife and niece, emotionally berated his wife so much as to break her spirit, he's stealing money from his niece's inheritance while barely leaving the rest of his family enough money to eat, and he has zero redeeming qualities. Snowman's actions after the murder indicate a lot of insanity on his part, but he was pretty justified in killing who he killed. Given how confused he was afterward about why the victim's family wouldn't be happy, and how he seems to think he's done the right thing, readers sometimes ended up liking him rather than being horrified by him. However, Snowman tricked the niece into giving him money. He told her something along the lines of his father being in the hospital undergoing an expensive operation and that he needs all the money he can get. She did not find out until much later that he lives alone and apparently has no parents Then, when he reveals that he killed her uncle, and she displayed horror, he said that he still had the money she gave him and that if she went to the police, he would just tell them that she paid him to kill her uncle.
* ''Literature/{{Hannibal}}'':
** In the book by Thomas Harris, several of his victims are completely unsympathetic and deserve their eventual fate. The rich guy who is funding a private effort to capture and kill him is a child molester, even raped his own sister. The cop who found him tried to sell him to the rich guy for millions of dollars instead of telling the FBI. The doctor who toyed with him and discredited Clarice Starling when he was in prison was a blowhard and a jerk, and Paul Krendler (the guy who got his brain eaten) was a Dept of Justice director who derailed Starling's career for not sleeping with him and colludes with the rich guy to capture Lecter. Each eventually died gruesomely.
** [[LampshadeHanging Lampshaded]] by Lecter's prison caretaker, who explains that Lecter preferentially kills rude people, sparing those who demonstrate graciousness.
** After Dr. Lecter became a [[MisaimedFandom lucrative commodity]] thanks to the film adaptations, the creators suddenly made Lecter exclusively a {{Jerkass}} killer: in ''Red Dragon'' and ''Silence of the Lambs'' almost none of Lecter's victims is an explicit asshole; only after Hannibal they were ALL retconned to be this trope.
* Most of the murder victims who get any introduction in ''Literature/BurningWater'' by Creator/MercedesLackey. It gets awkward when a pre-murder scene features three children acting and thinking like little monsters, and this scene is [[MoodWhiplash instantly followed]] by the protagonists responding with shock and horror that, you know, three kids have been killed.
* The gang of school bullies who make the fatal mistake of trying their usual shenanigans on Lavan, later known as "Lavan Firestorm" for very good reasons in ''[[Literature/HeraldsOfValdemar Brightly Burning]].''
* Usually not seen in ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'', where posthumous dialogue between victims and Death tends to paint all but the worst villains in a sympathetic light. Used straight with Homicidal Lord Winder from ''Literature/NightWatchDiscworld'', though: a paranoid former Patrician so universally despised that, when an ''undisguised'' assassin walked up to him in the midst of a grand ball, the majority of guests either allowed it to happen or actively distracted Winder's few supporters. Downplayed, because the target's paranoia was so great that the assassin (a young Vetinari) didn't actually have to strike him down; rather, the stress of the confrontation caused the deranged Lord Winder to suffer a fatal heart attack. Although knowing Vetinari, that may well have been the intended method of assassination.
** Averted in ''Literature/TheFifthElephant'': Wolf is an unrepentant killer, but when Vimes kills him by deliberately throwing a lit flare at him, knowing he can't resist the impulse to catch it in his mouth, he does ''not'' use a BondOneLiner, as that would make it murder.
** Generally, when Death doesn't give a neutral/hopeful message when you meet him, you're this. Examples include the [[EvilChancellor Agatean chancellor]] in ''Literature/{{Mort}}'', and the grag terrorist in ''Literature/RaisingSteam''.
* Creator/RobertAHeinlein's ''Literature/{{Friday}}''. Lieutenant Dickey is described as someone who had repeatedly tried to sleep with Friday's friend Janet despite being repeatedly told no, as "slimy", and as having "a size-twelve ego in a size-four soul". About a minute later, the title character kills him as he's trying to arrest one of her friends at gunpoint.
* The ''Literature/InDeath'' series by J.D. Robb, as a long-running mystery series following a homicide detective, inevitably has no few examples. Eve starts out essentially forcing herself to sympathize with them and feel for them despite her personal distaste for their behavior.
** ''Witness In Death'' is notable as the first instance in which Eve is forced to admit that she ''can't'' sympathize with the victim or feel any particular regret for his death. He starts out as a nasty, small-minded prima donna and just gets worse with every single thing that's found out, culminating in the revelation that the young actress he'd been sleeping with was his daughter, a fact he knew when they began their relationship and she didn't. The young woman's birth mother (who'd given her up for adoption) warned him of the connection in the hopes of preventing him from crossing the line into incest, only for him to rub the sexual relationship in her face and smugly suggest that she join them in a threesome! Between this and his other misdeeds, the victim would likely have been facing a life sentence if found out by the law before the murder, and that's mainly because the relevant jurisdiction wouldn't have the death penalty available. It's a good book to read for anyone wondering why a court system might employ justifiable homicide as a separate claim from self-defense (though there's a decent "defense of another" argument as well).
** The initial victim in ''Brotherhood In Death'' is painted right off the bat as a smug, self-centered politician who's been trying to pressure his NiceGuy cousin into agreeing to sell their late grandparents' home against their grandfather's express wishes. Eve eventually discovers that he, the two other victims, and three other men had a yearly tradition of drugging, abducting, and gang-raping a young woman, counting on the drugs to keep her from remembering the assault afterwards. They did this once a year for ''forty-nine years''. It's hard not to take the killer's side after this comes out; Eve herself mostly feels bitterly disappointed that they were killed before she could have them locked up in prison and that their killers will have to go to jail for murder despite being the real victims of the piece.
* Roger Malcolm in ''Fire in a Canebrake''. [[RippedFromTheHeadlines The true story]] of a ''lynching''. Blame the writer, as the book attempts to present Malcolm's lynching as the tragedy it actually was while painting Malcolm as a monster.
* ''Literature/{{Holes}}'':
** Kissin' Kate Barlow's first victim was the corrupt sheriff, who allowed the burning of her school and the murder of Sam. He brutally refused to help Kate when she begged for help, even trying to blackmail a kiss from Kate to save Sam from being hanged, but admit that he would still drive Sam away from town afterwards. Granted, the implication was that his behavior was caused by him being drunk, but it still at the very least ''really'' irresponsible of a guy to get drunk on a night when the town's gone insane and undoubtedly needs law enforcement.
** The rest of the town is implied to count as well. Every one of them turns against Sam, and not long after, the lake dries up, [[InferredHolocaust suggesting that a number of people died of thirst or had to abandon their homes]].
* In the short story "Invitation to a Poisoning", Nechtan confesses to adultery, theft, perjury, election fraud, armed robbery, and attempted rape to the respective victims of the crimes and then promptly drops dead of cyanide poisoning. Having been diagnosed with terminal cancer, he committed suicide in a manner calculated to involve his enemies in an inconvenient murder investigation.
* Jack Ritchie's short story "For All the Rude People". The protagonist gets fed up with deliberate rudeness and emotional cruelty in society and starts murdering anyone who's rude in his presence.
* Offscreen in the ''Literature/DarkestPowers'' trilogy, [[JerkWithAHeartOfGold Derek Souza]] broke a kid's back merely by throwing him at a wall, rendering him paraplegic. Later on, it turns out that Derek had only thrown the kid because he and two others were threatening his younger brother Simon Bae with knives, and Derek's werewolf instincts cause his protective streak to go into overdrive. Later, he goes on to kill another werewolf who was about to rape and kill Chloe, the girl he's in love with, though [[HeroicBSOD he regrets it bitterly afterwards]]. As it turns out, all of the people Derek physically hurts ([[DoesNotKnowHisOwnStrength on purpose, anyway]]) have done something or another to justify the beatdown.
* In the Creator/AndrewVachss Burke book ''Terminal'', it turns out that Melissa Turnbridge, the girl whose death Burke is supposed to investigate, was a sexually abusive FilleFatale. The perpetrators had only meant to BreakTheHaughty by raping her, [[IDidntMeanToKillHim not kill her outright.]]
* In ''Literature/LonelyWerewolfGirl'' part of Kalix's BackStory is she killed her father; when readers briefly meet him on a trip to the afterlife, it's pretty clear he got off easy with just death.
* ''Literature/AtlasShrugged'' has a train's worth of people brutally killed in an accident based on poor management choices, but not before the author makes sure to mention all about what terrible people they all were.
* ''Franchise/StarWarsExpandedUniverse'':
** The ''Literature/BlackFleetCrisis'' trilogy presents not one but ''two'' Asshole Victims who take turns victimizing each other. The Empire violently oppressed the Yevetha, a bloodthirsty AlwaysChaoticEvil race of aliens who believe all other species are disgustingly inferior. The Yevetha violently rebelled against them, seized the Empire's ships in a bloody coup, and enslaved the surviving Imperial soldiers. The Imperial slaves later violently rose up against their Yevethan masters and stole the ships back, robbing the Yevetha of the core of their fleet and ensuring the New Republic's victory against the Yevetha. Later the brutal Yevethan dictator, Nil Spaar, is stuffed in an escape pod by the Imperials and dumped into hyperspace.
** The ''Literature/NewJediOrder'' series follows this up by [[DroppedABridgeOnHim dropping a bridge]] on the Yevetha offscreen at the hands of the [[EvilerThanThou Yuuzhan Vong]]. The Yevetha were rearming and preparing to restart the war, so their prospective victims asked the extragalactic invaders to protect them in exchange for their surrender without a fight. The Yuuzhan Vong smashed the Yevetha fleet and glassed their homeworld.
** Thrackan Sal-Solo, first introduced in the ''Literature/TheCorellianTrilogy''. A cousin of Han Solo, he bore a strong resemblance to his famous cousin but had none of the honor that his cousin did. Among his crimes were terrorism and murder. Sal-Solo tried on a number of occasions to have his cousin and his family murdered. He was finally killed off by Boba Fett in the ''Literature/LegacyOfTheForce'' book ''Bloodlines''. Following his death, there was no shortage of Corellians wanting to claim credit for killing Sal-Solo, and Han Solo was definitely not in mourning over the death of his cousin.
*** In the novel ''Sacrifice'' very few tears are shed after Ben Skywalker assassinates Thracken's successor Dur Gejjen given how he tried to have Wedge Antilles killed and hired bounty hunters to kill Thracken, but also sets up peace talks with the intent of pulling a ISurrenderSuckers down the road.
* In the ''Literature/MrsMurphyMysteries'' at least one of the victims in each book will not be missed.
* You are meant to cheer for Tonya's father in ''Literature/ATimeToKill'' when he kills her rapists. By the end of the trial, almost everyone in the town is happy that he gets acquitted. Well, everyone but the Ku Klux Klan, but it's suggested that it isn't certain that the KKK is entirely an exception. An early scene in the book has the victims' families asking the KKK for help, and the KKK members are thinking, "We shouldn't let a black man get away with killing white people, but [[EvenEvilHasStandards frankly these guys had it coming]]." If you've got the ''KKK'' at least partially rooting for your murderer and your murderer is a black person, that's when you know you're not the most popular guy around.
* Creator/BenAaronovitch:
** The unnamed rapist at the end of ''Literature/RiversOfLondon'' who discovered his intended victim had a bad case of VaginaDentata.
** In the sequel ''Literature/MoonOverSoho'' the woman, who is now known as "The Pale Lady" racks up another three victims. All of whom were sexual deviants of one kind or another (including a corrupt ex-police officer with a taste for ''real'' {{Catgirl}}s).
* Creator/RobertBloch's short story "Sweets to the Sweet" features an abusive father who regularly beats his daughter, blames her for her mother's DeathByChildbirth, and calls her a witch. His brother isn't much better, making excuses for his behavior and not caring about the girl's suffering. So the girl studies witchcraft and makes a VoodooDoll, then when the brother catches on and is about to take it away, lies "Why, it's only candy!" and bites off its head.
* A number of the Dark Spirit's victims in ''Literature/ASnowballInHell'' are just terrible people, such as Darren "The Daddy" [=McDade=] who is very racist and [[{{Hypocrite}} ideologically bankrupt]], and a group of land mine manufacturing execs who are... well, land mine manufacturing execs. That doesn't mean that any of them deserve their [[ColdBloodedTorture ultimate fates]].
* ''Literature/KnightAndRogueSeries'':
** The first two victims of arson in the second book are a brothel and the home of the resident HangingJudge, who manages to be far less sympathetic than the brothel by showing more concern for his clothes than any of his clients' legal papers, and by promptly accusing Michael of the fire, demanding he be hanged on the spot no less.
** When Fisk and Michael meet, Fisk is on trial for conning a whole slew of asshole victims.
** Subverted in the first book. While Michael and Fisk spend a good amount of time speculating about how the victim may have had it coming, it turns out he was neither an asshole nor was he murdered.
* In ''Literature/SeptimusHeap'', no one feels particularly sad when Jillie Djinn dies. She was very nasty to Beetle and largely to blame for Merrin's actions through her employing of him in the Manuscriptorium.
* {{Zigzagged}} in "Dead Giveaway" (1976) by J. Vernon Shea, a short story set in the Franchise/CthulhuMythos where practically everyone in town turns out to be one of these. The victims included a nice old man [[BullyHunter who stands up against bullies]] and is later revealed to be a ''Nazi'' that fed razorblades to children in their Halloween candy because they wouldn't get off his lawn, a poor mentally ill lady [[AllOfTheOtherReindeer that is the mockery of the town]] who is later revealed to have killed her little brother when she was young and was driven mad with guilt, and the neighborhood children... well, KidsAreCruel and TeensAreMonsters. One character that seems to be a JerkAss from the offset, the "mean old lady," turns out to be just grieving for her dead son. [[RedemptionEqualsLife She is the only one who survives.]]
* Used in several ''Franchise/CthulhuMythos'' stories, mostly authors other than Lovecraft. The victims in question tend to be selfish jerks, and some are psychopaths. However, since their fates tend to be really, ''really'' nasty, the reader may feel bad for them.
** The "Insects from Shaggai" also qualify as their homeworld was destroyed by another abomination. But considering how evil and debased they were, the species deserved their fate.
* ''Literature/{{Endgame|2006}}'' has Zorro, who bullies the protagonist mercilessly for months, and pays the price when he snaps and shoots up his high school.
* ''Literature/{{Dopamine}}'' gives us Julie. She's unlikeable from the start -- arrogant, belligerent, presumptive, and self-important. When she crosses the MoralEventHorizon by pouring industrial-grade acid all over Rex's face, you know her fate is sealed.
* One of the cruelest acts committed by Ray in ''[[Literature/WorstPersonEver Worst. Person. Ever.]]'', has him stressing a fat airline passenger to a fatal heart attack. However, given the man was a horrid boss to his employees, his death goes unmourned.
* In the ''Literature/IKSGorkon'' novels from the current Literature/StarTrekNovelVerse, there's the Elabrej. The Klingons are in Elabrej space on a mission of general conquest; Klingon Captain Klag and his crew are nonetheless the protagonists of the series. The Elabrej government is oppressive and they're close to societal collapse anyway, with their general CrapsackWorld status making it easier to get behind the Klingon attempts to stomp all over them.
* In the ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'' novel ''Literature/HaloTheColeProtocol'', Bonifacio was a member of the security council of the asteroid colonies known as the Rubble; he later betrayed the Rubble by selling the coordinates of Earth to the Jackals, who'd give it to the Covenant. When the Rubble gets attacked by the Covenant, he scrams in an escape pod and tries to call a Covenant ship for help, but he doesn't know about the Covenants' policy of "KillAllHumans" and was vaporized by the vessel.
* In the ''Literature/AcrossTheUniverseBethRevis'' series, there's Luther. In the first book, he tries to rape Amy, while pretending that he's doing it under the effect of a drug in the water supply (he actually belongs to a small part of the population that is not given the mind-numbing drugs). In the second book, not only does he continue to stalk and try to again rape Amy, but it's revealed that he raped Victorina, just because he was angry that he couldn't rape Amy. Later in the second book, Amy manages to tell Elder all of this. She later finds Luther's body, with the heavy implication that Elder murdered him. Amy swings between being frightened of the idea that Elder killed someone and thinking that Luther seriously deserved it, before throwing the body out of an airlock.
* In ''Literature/{{Lolita}}'', it's hard to feel bad for Quilty when Humbert kills him for "saving" Lo. Where Humbert was a pedophile, Quilty was a pedophile, alcoholic, smoker, and drug abuser, who kicked Dolly out of his home because she refused to take part in the sexual acts he and his friends engaged in. There isn't much to sympathize with.
* In ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'', Edward Cullen spent his early vampire years feeding off human murderers, rapists, and other serious criminals before restricting himself to animal blood. This is heinous enough to make him think he's a monster and give him something to angst about but not horrible enough to scare off his love interest Bella or his fangirls.
* Used a couple times in ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles''.
** In ''Fool Moon'', a vicious mob hitman nicknamed "Spike" is killed by a werewolf. Even his employer, John Marcone, who otherwise cares for his employees (to one degree or another), doesn't even mention Spike over the course of the book.
** In ''Turn Coat'', Aleron [=LaFortier=], a member of the Wizard's Senior Council, is murdered, and you're not shown anyone mourning for ''him'' either. [=LaFortier=] was shown in an earlier book to want to throw Harry to the vampires, so this might be a case of ProtagonistCenteredMorality, plus the suspected murderer is a member of the White Council meaning most of the Wizards are much more worried about a potential traitor than mourning the dead. Harry is also too busy trying to work out who killed [=LaFortier=] in the first place to worry about much of anything else.
* Henning Mankell's ''Literature/KurtWallander'' series is fond of this trope.
** ''All'' of the victims in ''The Fifth Woman'', for example, were themselves horrible criminals who had been [[KarmaHoudini Karma Houdinis]] up to that point.
** ''Sidetracked'' is also full of these, from the ex-justice minister with a dark secret to the murderer's father who was abusive to his family.
* Almost invoked in ''Literature/TheHungerGames'' in the case of the Career tributes. The other districts, and Katniss, hate them for being better fed, formally trained, and gleefully murderous. So she doesn't really care (at first) when they die, especially Marvel, who killed Rue, and Clove, who would have killed her if she wasn't EvilGloating.
* In Jeffrey Archer's ''Sons of Fortune'', Nate is put on trial for killing Ralph Paton, his rival for the Republican nomination for the governor of Connecticut. A poll showed Nate's polling numbers went up, 72% didn't want him to withdraw from the race, and 7% said they would happily have killed the man for the asking.
* In ''Literature/AMacabreMythOfAMothMan'', Dr. Wu is introduced as the scientist who spent a full year PlayingWithSyringes to change Moth from an ordinary guy into a mutant moth creature. As the book and its sequel go on, it's also revealed that he had been performing his experiments on war criminals and people he bought off the Chinese black market since the 1950s at least and definitely took pleasure in what he did to Oz and Moth. No one at all was sorry when he was shot [[PosthumousCharacter not long before the events of the book happen]]. Played with in the case of Leone Trent and Reisenburgh, who both are established as extremely unpleasant people (the owner of the company that hired Wu and condoned his experiments and a FatBastard who was just as tied up in the corporation backstabbing business as the rest), but Moth feels sorry for both of their deaths, believing that no one deserves to go the way they did.
* The ''Series/BabylonFive'' licensed novels often play with this:
** In ''Voices'', Bester is nearly killed in a terrorist attack. Any sympathy he might have gained (which would probably have been very little, given that he IS Bester) quickly evaporates when he becomes convinced that Talia Winters was responsible based on a thin coincidence (the attack was supposedly carried out by Martian separatists, and Talia's uncle is a Martian separatist.) At the end, the real culprit, a CorruptCorporateExecutive who had hoped to oust Bester and privatize the Psi Corps, is [[LaserGuidedKarma killed by actual Martian separatists]], who were pissed off about all the negative attention that the terrorist attack had drawn to their cause.
** In ''Blood Oath'', Ivanova and Garibaldi are forced to protect G'Kar from mercenaries hired by the pissed-off daughter of a dead rival whose life he had ruined in order to get ahead in his career.
** In ''Clark's Law'', Earth President Clark orders Sheridan to execute an alien for murdering a human on the station. Sheridan's already hesitant to do it because the alien has suffered severe brain damage as a result of the accident and can't even remember committing the murder. It doesn't help that the human victim was a [[SexTourism sex tourist]] who had a long history of taking advantage of poverty-dwelling aliens in order to indulge his many appalling kinks. He was also doing this while married with two kids. His wife is, needless to say, less than thrilled about the whole mess and ultimately ends up sympathizing with the alien.
* ''Literature/CrimeAndPunishment's'' Rodion Rasholnikov kills a greedy moneylender who emotionally (and possibly physically) abuses her mentally disabled sister because he can get the experience of doing something completely immoral whilst actually benefitting the community.
* ''Literature/JohnDiesAtTheEnd'' has Billy Hitchcock, a bully and implied rapist who was DrivenToSuicide after one of his victims retaliated by [[EyeScream stabbing out his eyes]].
* A number of Creator/DavidGemmell books give POV to a minor villain for just long enough that the hero(es) feeding him a length of their preferred weapon seems welcome. ''The Swords of Night And Day'', for example, has a few pages with a minor officer who's a douche to his subordinate and doesn't even bother to remember the names of his (admittedly inhuman) troops, joking around with a dying civilian, looting his house, and musing on how much fun it is to abuse his power to get sexual favours before Skilgannon and Harad turn up and kill him.
* ''Literature/AThousandSplendidSuns'' has Rasheed, a foul-tempered, smug, and heartless man who marries a 15-year-old girl before promptly raping her and tricks a 14-year-old girl into marrying him after the girl's family died by rockets. He abuses his wives on a frequent basis, such as forcing one of them to eat pebbles, locking one up in a shed for trying to run away, and strangling and beating them. He also shows little sympathy for his deceased son, probably because of drunken neglect. Eventually, one of the wives has put up with his abuse and retaliates by using a shovel to kill him. Considering that he follows the rules of the Taliban, you're inclined to cheer for his death instead of mourning him.
* ''Literature/KateShugak'': Finn Grant, who is murdered in ''Restless in the Grave'', is a CorruptCorporateExecutive that dabbles in blackmail and runs a black market arms dealership.
* Bilquis in ''Literature/AmericanGods'' is one of the first victims of the war between the Old Gods and the New, overlapping with [[DisposableSexWorker a certain other death trope]]. But the reader is unlikely to have much sympathy considering she murdered a man in cold blood in her very first scene.
* A.J. Literature/{{Raffles}} connives at killing a blackmailer and when he finds that someone's beaten him to the victim, helps the real murderer escape justice. Later on in his career, he causes the deaths of several members of the Italian Comorra, including the man who killed his true love.
* Happens several times in the Literature/HonorHarrington novels, but also twisted into variations.
** In ''The Honor Of The Queen'' when Harrington finds out what had happened to the female prisoners taken by the Masadans (raped and murdered, with only two survivors), she's physically restrained at the last minute from cold-bloodedly executing the senior Masadan officer they've captured... not because anyone is particularly worried about having him dead, but because they don't want her to ruin her career over it.
** When people find out that Cordelia Ransome was killed in a particularly dramatic way when Harrington and company escaped her ship, no one, even her allies running Haven, is very heartbroken about her death.
** Later, when Thomas Theisman has pulled off his coup and gained control over Haven, he captures Oscar St-Just, head of StateSec and current dictator, and instead of putting him on trial, [[WhyDontYouJustShootHim puts a brutal and incredibly satisfying end to the Committee via pulser dart to St-Just's head]]. No one except some StateSec die-hards is particularly distressed over this, and in fact probably couldn't be heard anyway over the joyous hullabaloo.
** Out of all the things the Mesan Alignment has done, killing former Manticoran foreign secretary Elaine Descroix once she [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness has outlived her usefulness]] is probably the one thing that actually got them some sympathy points with the readers, as Descroix was probably the worst example of a CorruptPolitician in the entire High Ridge government (which was composed entirely of such characters).
* In ''Literature/CalebWilliams'', Falkland murders Tyrrel... but the narrator comes down on Falkland's side, as Tyrrel assaulted Falkland at a public meeting, arranged for his (Tyrrel's) cousin to be abducted and forced into marriage, and unjustly evicted some tenants from their home.
* ''Literature/Wasp1957'': Throughout the novel, the protagonist, Mowry, an AgentProvocateur on an alien planet, kills two agents of the Kaitempi--the Sirian StateSec known for their sadism and brutality. The latter victim also [[KickTheDog kicks the dog]] some time before the murder by beating and kicking an old man.
* The first third or so of ''Literature/{{Headhunters}}'' is taken up with protagonist Roger Brown ably demonstrating what a self-absorbed, misogynist prick he is, which makes it very hard to have much sympathy for him when everything starts going wrong.
* In ''Literature/TheIronTeeth'' the protagonist Blacknail kills the bandit Ferret in a brutal fashion. He was a bullying bigot though so no one really cared.
* In the Literature/DrThorndyke novel ''Mr. Pottermack's Oversight'', the victim is guilty of such infamies that Dr. Thorndyke is driven to remark that "hanging would be a great deal too good for him"; in the end, Thorndyke concludes that being killed by one of his own victims is no more than the man deserved, and lets the killer go free.
* The first ''Literature/PercyJacksonAndTheOlympians'' book has Percy's stepfather "Smelly Gabe" turned to stone by his wife. Usually, a good guy turning someone into stone is pretty bad, but Gabe commits DomesticAbuse to Sally and is an asshole to her and Percy, so people will not care at worst and cheer at best.
** In the Sequel series ''Literature/TheHeroesOfOlympus'', Nico meets a really vicious, Roman demigod. He frankly admits that he killed his legionnaire for fun and that he likes to torture humans and animals to death. He also wants to kill Nico and Reyna. To his bad luck, Nico is a very powerful demigod.
** Octavian also qualifies for this. He wants to attack Camp Half-Blood, and kill all the demigods there, [[FantasticRacism simply for the reason that they are Greek demigods, not Roman]]. In addition, he treats his own people badly and is even allied with monsters in order to get the bloodshed that he wants. As a result, the heroes do not warn him as he stands too close to a catapult, and nobody misses him when he inevitably dies from being launched by it. Even his most loyal bodyguard saw what was going to happen and did nothing to stop it.
* In ''Literature/RangersAtRoadsend'' by Creator/JaneFletcher, Sergeant Ellis always picks one of her subordinates and makes her life hell, so that the others obey in order to not become the unfavourite. She is jealous of people who are promoted over her and intentionally sticks to the letter of their orders to get them into trouble whenever she can. Lethal trouble, sometimes. When she is found dead with a knife in her back, the interesting question is not who had a motive to kill her (everyone did) but who had the opportunity.
* ''Literature/SpectralShadows'' makes sure that readers are glad Christine Rhoades walloped Dr. Craig Reinhart in Serial 11 after hearing about how he mistreats Kacey and goes so far as to try to torment her in front of Christine not once but twice. Guy must love getting his medicine. Then there's the three representatives of the conspiring towns later on that meet their end by the Lost Ferals; they were willing to execute Princess Jenny and cause a war between two towns that would lead to other towns benefiting from said war.
* In ''Literature/DasDorfDerMoerder'' by Elisabeth Herrmann, it turns out that all victims of the killer raped a woman who was prostituted by her husband. The only reason one is glad that he's caught at the end is that he also tried to kill the policewoman investigating the case, as well as two other people who came to find out what happened.
* When Thomas Cromwell has to bring down Anne Boleyn in ''Literature/BringUpTheBodies'', he culls gossip to whip up a case of adultery and treason and settles on lutenist Mark Smeaton[[note]]who he doesn't like but feels sort of bad about executing[[/note]] and the four men who played demons in a play mocking the death of his mentor, Cardinal Wolsey. Two of them are sympathetic figures, the other two less so. Will Brereton flouts the law in his Welsh holdings, getting a friend off for murder ([[SeriousBusiness over lawn bowling]]) and later having a man lynched after being lawfully acquitted of murder. George Boleyn is a SmugSnake who makes his wife Jane's life hell and had tried to drive a fatal wedge between Cromwell and Henry. Cromwell's rationalization was that he needed guilty men, so he chose men who ''are guilty'', just not necessarily as charged.
* ''Literature/TheAscendantKingdomsSaga'': Kestel comments to Blaine at one point that the scandal around him murdering his father Ian [=McFadden=] for [[ParentalIncest raping Blaine's sister Mari]] wasn't the murder itself: Kestel herself was frequently hired to kill adulterous and/or abusive husbands and MakeItLookLikeAnAccident. What pissed people off was Blaine killing Ian out in the open and refusing to deny it. Ian's status as an AssholeVictim is also why King Merrill commutes Blaine's sentence from beheading to transportation to the PenalColony at Velant. Blaine also muses at one point that most of the other murderers at Velant are people like him who killed one guy who had it coming (when they aren't completely innocent) since the really heinous murderers are usually executed instead of transported.
* ''Literature/TheWolfGift'' features [[OurWerewolvesAreDifferent a variety of Werewolves known as Morphenkinder]] who have the ability to sense evil in people, and are compelled to kill whoever it exudes from. Because of this, the ones they kill always are awful human beings who got their gruesome demise coming.
* In ''Literature/TalesOfTheFrogPrincess'', the Swamp Fairy curses the beautiful Princess Hazel, first Green Witch, that if she or any of her female ancestors ever touch a flower they will turn into evil, ugly old hags. It has disastrous consequences for Emma and her family a few hundred years later, but when she travels back in time and actually meets Hazel, she realizes that while she's powerful, she is only interested in flowers, not really helping the kingdom (overtaking the castle with plants til its hard to defend), is 'always dropping hints that she could' actually hurt someone with magic, scaring her parents enough to let her walk all over them, and using magic just to be cruel to her little sister. Not to mention she's spoiled, bossy, extremely vain, and rude to people's faces for no reason. And when she falls under the curse she just gets worse.
* ''Literature/FerDeLance'' Apparently going to be averted, since everyone who knew Peter Barstow thought he was a wonderful person with not an enemy in the world, then played straight when it turns out his death was MurderByMistake. The ''intended'' victim is a cold, self-righteous man who takes pride in always having "played by the rules". That includes killing his wife and her lover in cold blood -- and right in front of his three-year-old son, when he caught them ''in flagrante''. Then he abandoned the child to the care of his mother's family and ignored his existence until he decided he wanted grandchildren. He doesn't think that the boy (now 25 years older) could ''possibly'' resent being treated like this.
* In ''Literature/TheSecretPlace'' by Tana French, the murdered boy turns out to have been this. [[spoiler: He had always two or more girlfriends at the same time, and happily [[RapeIsASpecialKindOfEvil had sex]] with a girl who he knew never wanted to have sex with him but sacrificed herself so he'd stay away from her best friend. ItsComplicated.]]
* Bunny from ''Literature/TheSecretHistory'' by Donna Tartt. He's misogynistic, homophobic, antisemitic, a hater of Catholics, a compulsive thief, and he continually leeches off his friends, causing them to murder him.
* In ''Literature/ADogsWayHome'', Dutch's previous owner Kurch turns out to be a homophobic jerk who refuses responsibility of Dutch after getting seriously injured in an avalanche that almost killed them both. Kurch was only injured because he went skiing in a restricted area.
* ''Literature/{{Caliphate}}'':
** [[TeensAreMonsters Fudail]] is Abdul's psychotic son who [[RapeIsASpecialKindOfEvil gang-rapes]] their family's underage slave girl Petra alongside his friends. Though he is beaten up by his sister Besma and sentenced to 30 lashes to his legs for his crime, he gets off pretty slightly compared to his victim, who is [[DefiledForever sentenced to become]] a [[SexSlave houri]] for [[SlutShaming being raped]]. Later on, it's revealed that he was killed by his sister for trying to rape her too and even his own father is unsympathetic because he knows his son was a monster.
** Dr. Meara is the most vile of all the three renegade scientists working for the Caliphate since he is a pedophiliac sociopath who loves to drag little boys on a leash and watch his test subjects die slowly. So when Hamilton captures and subjects him to ColdBloodedTorture to find out where is the virus, one doesn't feel very sorry for his predicament. At the end, he is later left tied to a chair, one of his victims (a little boy) shows up sharpening a pencil...
* Dex is the first of the quest to die in ''Literature/{{Below}}'', by a caustic "[[BlobMonster jelly]]" eating into his leg. The others try to show ''some'' respect, but [[JerkWithAHeartOfJerk nobody liked him]]—including mild-mannered [[BewareTheNiceOnes Tibs]], who caused the "accident" by deliberately failing to warn anyone of the approaching jellies. It's implied Dex did something horrific that Tibs was eager to avenge because as others learn of the murder they give Tibs a pass. The protagonist however isn't in the know about the motive, so he (and the reader) can only speculate.
* In ''Heroes Of The Sigil'', sequel to ''Literature/WarlocksOfTheSigil'' we are introduced to Resiak in the first chapter while he is being cruel at a party he hosts, which he apparently does to control people, he is killed at the end of the first chapter, apart from a few friends most people are not sad, even though he is a War Hero (most people note in the ways this can overlap with war criminal).
* In ''Literature/ChanceAndChoicesAdventures'', the plot is started by the DeathByRacism of bandit Hank Butterfield, whose fellow gang members swear vengeance for his death. The second book sees his fellow gang member Gus get killed while on the road to Little Rock.
* In the Detection Club's OfficialParody ''Ask a Policeman'', the murder victim is a press baron who (for no better reason than to increase sales) had run campaigns persecuting the police, the government, and the Church. He was a BadBoss to his staff, too. Consequently there's a wide field of suspects, and none of the detectives asked to investigate feels particularly eager to convict.
* Done several times in the ''Literature/GiveYourselfGoosebumps'' series. Notably, several bad endings occur as a result of deliberately selfish choices by the reader (such as leaving your five-year-old sister alone with an escaped mummy in "Diary of a Mad Mummy"); and in "All-Day Nightmare", one choice allows you to shoot the villain of the storyline into space. When your friend points out that you killed someone, you simply respond that she was evil.
* ''Literature/{{Perfidia}}'': The LAPD eventually frames a Japanese man named Fujio Shudo for the brutal murder of a local Japanese family. He's completely innocent of the crime, and he's so zonked out on terpin hydrate during the interrogation that the police are able to manipulate him into confessing. But he's a violent rapist, a drug addict, and an all-around scumbag and psychopath, which makes him perfect as a scapegoat.
* ''[[https://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/book-page/65951/vengeance-and-beyond Vengeance and Beyond]]'' begins with the abandonment of the prosecution of an asshole boyfriend for the rape-murder of his girlfriend. He was innocent of the crime, a victim of prosecution. In jail awaiting trial, he was the victim of intense coercive police interrogation and attacks by fellow inmates. [[spoiler:Subverted in that he, his attorney, and various others who aided him are sent back by MentalTimeTravel to the victim's body, to experience the crime themselves, and consequently prevent the murder although not the brutal rape, and get the actual rapists brought to justice.]]
* In Creator/EdgarAllanPoe's ''Literature/TheCaskOfAmontillado'', Montresor claims he murdered Fortunato because of some unspecified insult which, after numerous injuries, was the straw that broke the camel's back. Yet still, we get no info on any supposed insults, and Montresor is not exactly the most reliable narrator. Though if the narration of the events being told is more accurate than the imagined slight, Fortunato is at the very least a rather obnoxious drunkard and isn't above mocking Montresor for not being a Freemason.
* ''Literature/{{Stray}}'': Pufftail speculates that one of the cats rescued at an AnimalTesting facility was [[spoiler:the former cult leader Tom-Cat]]. The cat had [[EyeScream his eyelids removed]] and was forced onto a treadmill in order to test the effects of sleeplessness.
* The number of asshole victims in ''Literature/ShadowOfTheConqueror'' is practically a LongList.
** Daylen goes on a lynching spree at one point where he offs several rapists and murderers in vigilante justice.
** Daylen later meets Blackheart, the most feared pirate captain on Tellos, and proceeds to give him the [[UsefulNotes/VladTheImpaler Vlad Țepeș]] [[ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice treatment]].
** The entire crew of the ''Maraven'', who are rapists and HumanTraffickers to a man, and end up on the receiving end of Daylen's wrath shortly after Blackheart.
** Jena, [[KnightTemplar the leader of the Dawnists]], whom Daylen murders in cold blood soon after meeting.
** [[RetiredMonster Daylen himself]] gets [[ExtremeMeleeRevenge half his major bones broken]], courtesy of [[RoaringRampageOfRevenge Lyrah]]. He comments almost immediately afterwards that it was nothing he didn't deserve.
** The Dalavian Council of Dukes, who have to deal with Daylen's fabricated rumor that they [[BestialityIsDepraved have sex with goats]], although we only have Daylen's personal testimony to go on as to how much they actually deserved it.
* ''Literature/JacquouTheRebel'':
** Laborie, the overseer for the [[FeudalOverlord Nansac family domains]], extorted the tenants, cheated them for the rents, and sexually harassed women so nobody much mourned him when the father of the hero shot him after Laborie had his dog shot, wounding his wife. The first person to see his body flatly said he had it coming, and other onlookers have this reaction. Laborie was hated so much his murderer was hidden by pretty much the entire region until a farmhand was blackmailed to rat him.
** The Nansacs themselves were so tyrannical against their tenants that, after the hero led farmers to burh their castle, he is acquitted by the jury ''even after confessing the crime''.
* ''Literature/MillenniumSeries'': Nils Bjurman was named guardian for Lisbeth Salander and abuses his position to brutally rape her. Lisbeth then made him an EmbarrassingTattoo stating he was a "sadistic swine, a pervert and a rapist". Then he was murdered by Ronald Niedermann after he asked him for a hit against Lisbeth and Ronald thought he would endanger him. The reader is not likely to mourn him, nor did the police after they found this tattoo in his body and learnt the truth about it.

* ''Literature/AlphaAndOmega'' has Brandon Nesbitt, cohost of a trashy talk show. During his first POV narrative, it is implied that he was involved in a Me Too-related scandal, which cost him his job as a serious journalist. Over the next few chapters, to establish himself as a racist, his internal narration refers to the other cohost, Gabriela, as a "Mexican bitch". Later, when the two are on a trip to Israel in hopes of reviving their respective careers in journalism, he goads Gabriela into arranging to open the Ark of the Covenant. Then, to take her place, he slips her a roofie. With her unconscious, he is tempted to rape her, with his internal narration referring to her as "a cunt that needs fucking", but desists only because he would get caught. When he [[spoiler:tries to open the Ark and is struck dead, he clearly had it coming.]]
* ''Literature/TheHangman'': Most of the townspeople, including the narrator himself, fall under this trope. Throughout the poem, they all stand idly by as the title character strings up people for spurious reasons, even though none of them are the man he allegedly built the gallows to specifically hang. Turns out he's hanging all of them, the narrator in particular, for [[BystanderSyndrome letting him get away with it.]]
--> "First the alien, then the Jew, I did no more than you let me do."
* ''Literature/TheBlackSpider'': One of the victims of the titular monster was the oppressive and greedy Baron von Stoffeln, whose tyrannical antics were indirectly responsible for the spider's creation in the first place. He was mourned by absolutely nobody.
* Simon in ''Literature/OneOfUsIsLying'' is murdered by someone spiking his water with peanut oil, activating his peanut allergy and suffocating him. The thing is, Simon ran a blog that posted secrets and unflattering gossip about everyone else in school which makes it hard for most of the school to sympathize and means EveryoneIsASuspect.
* ''Literature/SixOfCrows'':

* ''Literature/EllenAndOtis'': Non-fatally for Otis himself in the final chapter of ''Otis Spofford'', when Ellen and Austine finally get the better of him and when even his close friends, Stewy and George, side with the girls against him (of course, they have their own reasons to enjoy witnessing Otis's comeuppance). Even though Otis has it coming, one can't help feeling at least a little sorry for him.
* ''Literature/ThePower'':
** Saudi Arabia and Moldova are the first countries to fall after the Power is awakened, Saudi Arabia being the world's most repressive regime toward women, and Moldova being the world capital of sex trafficking.
** Likewise, [[spoiler: Darrell Monke]] has a very ugly death that he very much deserved.
** Allie electrocutes her foster father while he's raping her.
* In ''Literature/AuntDimity: Detective'' after the bludgeoning death of Prunella Hooper, practically no one in Finch has anything even slightly positive to say about her. The Pym sisters comment that as no one wished to SpeakIllOfTheDead at her wake, her son and the vicar were the only ones who said anything at all.
* Josh Lanyon almost might be said to specialize in this; a good proportion of his mysteries involve the murder of characters who were contemptuous, arrogant, and insulting to those around them, both to go for the EveryoneIsASuspect scenario and to give the protagonist himself a motive and thus bring him under suspicion. In ''Somebody Killed His Editor'', for example, the two victims--Peaches Sadler and [[spoiler:Stephen Krass, the titular editor]]--were each abrasive, opinionated jerks, abusive to everyone in general and to the protagonist, Christopher Holmes, in particular. Lanyon's skill allows the murders to nonetheless assume weight and meaning as tragic choices for ordinary people driven to kill.
* ''Literature/MoDaoZuShi''s Jin Guangshan is a truly loathsome piece of work. To start with: serial womanizer (who particularly targets women of lower social standing than him because it makes them easier to control) and rapist who flaunts his dalliances in front of his wife and son. Uses and abuses any of the illegitimate children who make the mistake of wanting any kind of familial acknowledgment from him and simply leaves the rest (if he even remembers they exist) to rot. And ''then'' there are all the lives he ruins (or ends) in the name of greed and political power. Even after it's discovered that his death was arranged by one of said abused bastard sons, ''nobody'' has any sympathy for ''him as a person'' whatsoever, they're just appalled at the son's rejection of filial piety.
* ''Literature/JaineAustenMysteries'': It's a murder mystery series. What else would you expect?
** Stacey Lawrence from ''This Pen for Hire'' was a manipulative AlphaBitch.
** Quinn Kirkland, the heartbreaking jerk from ''Last Writes''. Not only was he cheating on multiple women (one of which [[JailBait is likely underage]]), [[spoiler:but a careless prank of putting a snake in a glovebox while working as a valet got Wells Dumont's wife killed, which inspired Wells to kill Quinn.]]
** [=SueEllen=] Kingsley from ''Killer Blonde''. An abusive RichBitch who treated her stepdaughter like trash.
** Frenchie, AKA Giselle Ambrose from ''Shoes to Die For''. A home-wrecker, a greedy bitch, and an extortionist.
** Marybeth Olsen from ''The PMS Murder''. She screwed over her "friend" Colin by not making him a partner in her company, caused the accident that slowly killed Doris' husband, was sleeping with Rochelle's husband, and actually had the gall to offer to give Ashley Morgan a loan at "1% less than a bank rate."
** Vic Cleveland from ''Death by Pantyhose'', a comedian who steals jokes, cheats on his lovers left and right, and is a [[spoiler:blackmailer]]. There's just so much of the man to hate.
** Garth Janken, AmoralAttorney and blackmailer from "The Danger of Candy Canes".
** Patti Devane and [[spoiler:Julio]] from ''Killing Bridezilla''. The former for being a SpoiledBrat and AlphaBitch, the latter for [[spoiler:covering the killer's ass]].
** Graham Palmer III from ''Killer Cruise'' a shallow GoldDigger who went through women like tissues.
** Bunny Cooper from ''Death of a Trophy Wife'' was a [[GoldDigger gold digging]] bitch who treated everyone around her horribly.
** Mallory Francis from ''Pampered to Death'', a horrifically stuck-up and [[EntitledBastard entitled bitch.]]
** Dr. Preston [=McCay=] from "The Dangers of Gingerbread Cookies". A womanizing and possibly racist jerk.
** Cryptessa Muldoon, AKA Eleanor Jenkins, from ''Death of a Neighborhood Witch'' was a miserable and bitter old bird who treated her neighbors like less than dirt.
** Scotty, the definitive {{Jerkass}} MallSanta from "Nightmare on Elf Street".
** Joy Amoroso from ''Killing Cupid'' was a swindler and a control freak.
** Dean Oliver from ''Murder Has Nine Lives'', a sleazy ConMan who stole his great invention of Skinny Kitty along with others and was cheating on his wife with women left, right, and center.
** Hope Harper from ''Death of a Bachelorette'', a conniving AlphaBitch.
** Scotty Parker from ''Death of a Neighborhood Scrooge'', a bitter, petty, and misanthropic [[FormerChildStar has-been child actor]], with a fist tighter than Ebenezer's.
** Tommy [=LaSalle=] from ''Death of a Gigolo'', a blackmailing, [[GoldDigger gold digging]], and abusive {{Slimeball}}.
*** [[spoiler:From the same book, Emma says the real Daisy Kincaid was "a sour old fossil" who treated her like dirt, but we only have her word to go on.]]
** Bebe Braddock from ''Murder Gets a Makeover'', a cruel and backstabbing makeover guru.
** Really, the only one of the victims to not be a prick in some way is Amy Leighton from ''Death by Tiara'', whose only crime was [[spoiler:wanting to report her boss Candace for taking bribes.]]
* ''Literature/BruceCovillesBookOf'':
** ''Bruce Coville's Book of Monsters'': In ''Timor and the Furnace Troll'', the story ends with [[spoiler: the titular characters devouring Timor's classmates, who are largely a pack of bullies who've been mocking Timor for being a failure as an elf for years]].
** ''Bruce Coville's Book of Ghosts'': Robert Delano Adams in ''For Love of Him'', a drunk, a cheater, and a wife-beater who was ultimately shot by his own wife.
* {{Downplayed|trope}} with Alison in ''Literature/NighttimeIsMyTime''. By all accounts she was never a very pleasant person and could be ruthless as a talent agent, making a lot of enemies. At her memorial, most people aren't especially torn up by her death, with only Jean being genuinely saddened. Even then though, her murder is still presented as a horrific act and [[DisproportionateRetribution not something she deserved]]. Some characters also express distaste when others [[EveryoneHasStandards dismiss]] or [[DudeNotFunny joke]] about her death even if she was a jerk.

* ''Literature/AStudyInCharlotte'': The murder victim in the first book, Lee Dobson, was an utterly horrible person who was revealed to have sexually harassed one of the characters for a year before raping her. Unfortunately, that leads to two of his most frequent victims being suspected of the crime.

** In [[Literature/LeMorteDArthur Le Morte D’Arthur]] Gawain says that he doesn’t mind that Lancelot killed Agravain, his brother, because [[{{Jerkass}} he was kind of a dick]]. Unfortunately, he ''[[KnightTemplarBigBrother does]]'' care about his two other (full-blooded) brothers...

** [[spoiler:Robert Powell is fatally struck in the head with a stray bullet when the cops confront Blue Eyes (the ''other'' main antagonist). As by this point Robert had been revealed to be a dreadful person who was just as guilty as Betsy of helping ruin people's lives and was in all likelihood going to [[KarmaHoudiniWarranty get away with it]], no one is sorry he died like he did save for [[GoldDigger Muriel Craig]] (mostly because she's now lost her MealTicket)]].

* In ''Literature/ABrothersPrice'', a bomb goes off in a theatre where a big part of the royal family are watching a play. While the eldest princesses are implied to be stupid and selfish, they're not evil - but their husband, Keifer, was not only an abusive husband all around, he also has raped and beaten a thirteen-year-old girl (one of his younger wives). The protagonists don't feel sorry for him, neither does the reader.

* ''Literature/ToKillAMockingbird'': The biggest asshole is Bob Ewell. After an innocent black man is killed escaping from prison after being framed for the rape of Ewell's daughter and despite his victory over the black man's defense attorney Atticus Finch, Ewell swears revenge on Finch for exposing what a scumbag he was at the trial. At the end, he tries to murder Atticus' two children, only to get killed himself in the ensuing struggle by the reclusive Boo Radley. Even though it is obvious he died at Boo's hands, the sheriff argues with Atticus about the prudence and morals of letting this be publically known; ironically, he's certain nearly everyone's sympathies would be with Boo, but thinks it would be cruel to go breaking his solitude by holding him up to everyone's ''praise and gratitude'' when Boo Radley really does just want to be left alone. Atticus eventually accepts the sheriff's story that Ewell killed himself by falling on his own knife. The extent of Ewell's assholishness is lampshaded in the novel, where it's noted that not only does he hold a grudge against everyone involved in the case, he was too much of a DirtyCoward to face those people directly. Besides Atticus, he tries to break into the home of the judge, in the middle of the night and stalks the black man's widow as she goes to work until her boss threatens to have him arrested for it. It's even implied that Ewell may have [[ParentalIncest raped his daughter]].

** In ''The Raven in the Foregate'', Father Ailnoth's death is mourned by nobody, after the residents and reader spend a few chapters being appalled by his cruelty. In the end, it turns out that his death was not murder, but an accident which the sole witness considered to be divine judgment.

** Principal Chapman from is a weird example - in the main series, he's a PapaWolf who's made the ultimate sacrifice for his daughter and is regularly used as a ButtMonkey in later books. There's no indication in the main plot Chapman has any kind of karmic comeuppance coming. But in the ''Chronicles'' prequel books Chapman appears as a dangerous [[TheQuisling quisling]] who tries to offer the Yeerks Earth in exchange for his safety. This portrayal of Chapman is a stark contrast to all his other appearances, with the dissonance being so stark some fans have gone so far as to posit that the Chapman of the ''Chronicles'' books is a different character with the same name. (It's implied in the novel that the Ellimist returned him to Earth and wiped his memory of his previous encounter with the Yeerks, which may explain this.)

** ''Witness In Death'' is notable as the first instance in which Eve is forced to admit that she ''can't'' sympathize with the victim or feel any particular regret for his death. He starts out as a nasty, small-minded prima donna and just gets worse with every single thing that's found out, culminating in the revelation that the young actress he'd been sleeping with was his daughter, a fact he knew when they began their relationship and she didn't. The young woman's birth mother (who'd given her up for adoption) warned him of the connection in the hopes of preventing him from crossing the line into incest, only for him to rub the sexual relationship in her face and smugly suggest that she join them in a threesome! Between this and his other misdeeds, the victim would likely have been facing a life sentence if found out by the law before the murder, and that's mainly because the relevant jurisdiction wouldn't have the death penalty available. It's a good book to read for anyone wondering why a court system might employ justifiable homicide as a separate claim from self-defense (thought there's a decent "defense of another" argument as well).

* In ''Literature/LonelyWerewolfGirl'' part of Kalix's BackStory is she killed her father; when readers briefly meet him in a trip to the afterlife it's pretty clear he got off easy with just death.

** Thrackan Sal-Solo, first introduced in the ''Literature/TheCorellianTrilogy''. A cousin of Han Solo, he bore a strong resembelence to his famous cousin but had none of the honor that his cousin did. Among his crimes were terrorism, and murder. Sal-Solo tried on a number of occasions to have his cousin and his family murdered. He was finally killed off by Boba Fett in the ''Literature/LegacyOfTheForce'' book ''Bloodlines''. Following his death, there was no shortage of Corellians wanting to claim credit for killing Sal-Solo, and Han Solo was definetly not in mourning over the death of his cousin.

** In ''Turn Coat'', Aleron [=LaFortier=], a member of the Wizard's Senior Council, is murdered, and you're not shown anyone mourning for ''him'' either. [=LaFortier=] was shown in an earlier book to want to throw Harry to the vampires, so this might be a case of ProtagonistCenteredMorality, plus the suspected murder is a member of the White Council meaning most of the Wizards are much more worried about a potential traitor than mourning the dead. Harry is also too busy trying to work out who killed [=LaFortier=] in the first place to worry about much of anything else.

* ''Literature/JohnDiesAtTheEnd'' has Billy Hitchcock, a bully and implied-rapist who was DrivenToSuicide after one of his victims retaliated by [[EyeScream stabbing out his eyes]].
* A number of Creator/DavidGemmell books give POV to a minor villain for just long enough that the hero(es) feeding him a length of their preferred weapon seems welcome. ''The Swords of Night And Day'', for example, has a few pages with a minor officer who's a douche to his subordinate and doesn't even bother to remember the names of his (admittedly inhuman) troops, joking around with a dying civilian, looting his house, and musing on how much fun it is to abuse his power to get sexual favours, before Skilgannon and Harad turn up and kill him.
* ''Literature/AThousandSplendidSuns'' has Rasheed, a foul-tempered, smug, and heartless man who marries a 15-year old girl before promptly raping her and tricks a 14-year old girl into marrying him after the girl's family died by rockets. He abuses his wives on a frequent basis, such as forcing one of them to eat pebbles, locking one up in a shed for trying to run away, and strangling and beating them. He also shows little sympathy for his deceased son, probably because of drunken neglect. Eventually, one of the wives has put up with his abuse and retaliates by using a shovel to kill him. Considering that he follows the rules of the Taliban, you're inclined to cheer for his death instead of mourning him.
* ''Literature/KateShugak'': Finn Grant, who is murdered in ''Restless in the Grave'', is a CorruptCorporateExecutive who dabbles in blackmail and runs a black market arms dealership.
* Bilquis in ''Literature/AmericanGods'' is one of the first victims of the war between the Old Gods and the New, overlapping with [[DisposableSexWorker a certain other death trope.]] But the reader is unlikely to have much sympathy considering she murdered a man in cold blood in her very first scene.

** Later, when Thomas Theisman has pulled off his coup and gained control over Haven, he captures Oscar St-Just, head of StateSec and current dictator, and instead of putting him on trial, [[WhyDontYouJustShootHim puts a brutal and incredibly satisfying end to the Committee via pulser dart to St-Just's head]]. No one except some StateSec die-hards are particularly distressed over this, and in fact probably couldn't be heard anyway over the joyous hullabaloo.

* The first ''Literature/PercyJacksonAndTheOlympians'' book has Percy's stepfather "Smelly Gabe" turned to stone by his wife. Usually, a good guy turning someone into stone is pretty bad, but Gabe commits DomesticAbuse to Sally and an asshole to her and Percy, so people will not care at worst and cheer at best.

* ''Literature/FerDeLance'' Apparently going to be averted, since everyone who knew Peter Barstow thought he was a wonderful person with not an enemy on the world, then played straight when it turns out his death was MurderByMistake. The ''intended'' victim is a cold, self-righteous man who takes pride in always having "played by the rules". That includes killing his wife and her lover in cold blood -- and right in front of his three-year-old son, when he caught them ''in flagrante''. Then he abandoned the child to the care of his mother's family and ignored his existence until he decided he wanted grandchildren. He doesn't think that the boy (now 25 years older) could ''possibly'' resent being treated like this.

* Bunny from ''Literature/TheSecretHistory'' by Donna Tartt. He's misogynistic, homophobic, antisemitic, a hater of Catholics, a compulsive thief, and he continually leeches of his friends, causing them to murder him.

** Dr. Meara is the most vile of all the three renegade scientists working for the Caliphate since he is a pedophiliac sociopath who loves to drag little boys on a leash and watch his test subjects die slowly. So when Hamilton captures and subjects him to ColdBloodedTorture to find out where is the virus, one doesn't feel very sorry for his predicament. At the end, he is latter on left tied to a chair, one of his victims (a little boy) shows up sharpening a pencil...

* ''Literature/{{Perfidia}}'': The LAPD eventually frames a Japanese man named Fujio Shudo for the brutal murder of a local Japanese family. He's completely innocent of the crime, and he's so zonked out on terpin hydrate during the interrogation that the police are able to manipulate him into confessing. But he's a violent rapist, a drug addict and an all-around scumbag and psychopath, which makes him perfect as a scapegoat.

*** Nate Gray joined the BigBad, poisoned his mother and lied and betrayed his sister. Even before he became a criminal, he was a selfish and cold-hearted person. He played with Jessamine feelings to make her a spy and was involved in at least one murder. After finding out that Tessa was not human, he called her a hideous creature. Shortly before he dies, however, he shows remorse, and Tessa cries for him, despite his evil deeds.

*** Half-werewolf Casper Sterling became a contract murder for a lot of money. Unfortunately, his client had completely different plans with him.
*** Horace Dearborn was a fanatical, SmugSnake who tried to severly restrict Downworlder rights. He also gave orders to kill teenagers. And so nobody is sad when he is killed.

*** Celine Montclaire was [[AbusiveParents abused and beaten by her parents]] all her life. When they are wrongly accused, convicted and executed, she does not speak in their favor, although she knows that they are innocent in this regard. But nobody can really blame her.

** Jan Van Eck. He's [[spoiler: an abusive father, a shitty husband, a ruthless business man, planning to take advantage of his advance knowledge about ''parem'' to play the markets and make a lot of money. He also makes the mistake of double-crossing Kaz Brekker]]. By the end of the duology, he [[spoiler: has lost all his money and property to his despised son Wylan, been booted from his position of power on the Merchant's Council, lost all of his credibility and power, and been jailed for fraud (a very serious crime, akin to murder, in Kerch)]]. No one's feeling sorry for him.

** Marybeth Olsen from ''The PMS Murder''. She screwed over her "friend" Colin by not making him a partner in her company, caused the accident that slowly killed Doris' husband, was sleeping with Rochelle's husband and actually had the gall to offer to give Ashley Morgan a loan at "1% less than a bank rate."
** Vic Cleveland from ''Death by Pantyhose'', a comedian who steals jokes, cheats on his lovers left and right, and a [[spoiler:blackmailer]]. There's just so much of the man to hate.

** Dean Oliver from ''Murder Has Nine Lives'', a sleazy ConMan who stole his great invention of Skinny Kitty along with others and was cheating on his wife with women left right and center.

** ''Bruce Coville's Book of Ghosts'': Robert Delano Adams in ''For Love of Him'', a drunk, a cheater and a wife-beater who was ultimately shot by his own wife.

* ''Literature/{{Wasp}}'': Throughout the novel, the protagonist, Mowry, an AgentProvocateur on an alien planet, kills two agents of the Kaitempi--the Sirian StateSec known for their sadism and brutality. The latter victim also [[KickTheDog kicks the dog]] some time before the murder by beating and kicking an old man.

** [[MamaBear Molly Weasley]] killing [[TheDragon Bellatrix]] [[PsychopathicWomanchild Lestrange]] [[BerserkButton after the latter tried to kill Ginny]] is considered the series' biggest SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome.

** The man Kaz dropped off of a building. He was a clerk who worked for a man they needed information from. The clerk after giving Kaz the information he wanted, made the mistake of offering up the ''services'' of a young prostitute who he has blackmail on. Kaz, who has a bit of a BerserkButton about the girl's mistress and the house she works for, drops the man off of the building. Not one single reader felt sorry for the guy.

** In ''Monk's Hood'', Gervase Bonel's action are distinctly lacking in Chritian charity, but as pointed out by Cadfael, his actions are entirely legal and proceed from a very strong sense of what is his being his. Such as holding a former villein's son in servage rather than freeing him as he'd hoped, or willing his entire property to the abbey just to spite his stepson over a disagreement.

** In ''Literature/HarryPotterAndThePrisonerOfAzkaban'' Hermione slaps a very deserving Draco across the face after he spends the book being his usual spoiled self and campaigning to have a Buckbeak killed for behaving like a Hippogriff after he received an injury due to ignoring instructions in class and pushes his gloating a little too far.

** The greatest example would be [[HateSink Dolores]] [[TyrantTakesTheHelm Umbridge.]] When her fate in the fifth book wasn't enough, WordOfGod [[UpToEleven had to have her locked up in]] TheAlcatraz [[FateWorseThanDeath for life.]]

** ''Witness In Death'' is notable as the first instance in which Eve is forced to admit that she ''can't'' sympathize with the victim or feel any particular regret for his death. He starts out as a nasty, small-minded prima donna and just gets worse with every single thing that's found out, culminating in the revelation that the young actress he'd been sleeping with was his daughter, a fact he knew when they began their relationship and she didn't. The young woman's birth mother (who'd given her up for adoption) warned him of the connection in the hopes of preventing him from crossing the line into incest, only for him to rub the sexual relationship in her face and smugly suggest that she join them in a threesome). Between this and his other misdeeds, the victim would likely have been facing a life sentence if found out by the law before the murder, and that's mainly because the relevant jurisdiction wouldn't have the death penalty available. It's a good book to read for anyone wondering why a court system might employ justifiable homicide as a separate claim from self-defense (thought there's a decent "defense of another" argument as well).

* Bunny from ''Literature/TheSecretHistory'' by Donna Tartt. He's misogynistic, homophobic, antisemitic, a hater of Catholics, a compulsive thief, and he continually leeches of his friends.

*** Drogo Bosiet is a huge brutish man chasing down an escaped villain and beating his groom on the journey. He winds up dead.

* In Nancy Atherton's ''Aunt Dimity: Detective'' after the bludgeoning death of Prunella Hooper, practically no one in Finch has anything even slightly positive to say about her. The Pym sisters comment that as no one wished to SpeakIllOfTheDead at her wake, her son and the vicar were the only ones to say anything at all.

** The two victims in "A Study in Scarlet" (1887) definitely qualify, being murderers themselves as well as rapists, misogynists, hedonists, and religious extremists who, in turn, abandoned said religion ([[AcceptableReligiousTargets Mormonism]]) the second it became inconvenient for them. In this case, the reader is definitely expected to side with the murderer, especially when the second half of the book is devoted to retelling the background in which his girlfriend's father was killed by one of the victims and the other forced her to marry him, leading what was implied to be her suicide. The one who killed the two victims was arrested but died from a preexisting medical condition before ever standing trial.

* In the ''Literature/AcrossTheUniverse'' series, there's Luther. In the first book, he tries to rape Amy, while pretending that he's doing it under the effect of a drug in the water supply (he actually belongs to a small part of the population that is not given the mind-numbing drugs). In the second book, not only does he continue to stalk and try to again rape Amy, but it's revealed that he raped Victorina, just because he was angry that he couldn't rape Amy. Later in the second book, Amy manages to tell Elder all of this. She later finds Luther's body, with the heavy implication that Elder murdered him. Amy swings between being frightened of the idea that Elder killed someone and thinking that Luther seriously deserved it, before throwing the body out of an airlock.

** Ratchett, the victim in ''Literature/MurderOnTheOrientExpress'', turns out to be the perpetrator of a truly despicable and infamous crime. Upon discovery, several suspects cannot stop themselves from cursing his name, even at the risk of incriminating themselves; Poirot remarks that the victim was so despicable that it'd actually be more suspicious if they ''didn't.''