Starter Villain is a 2023 comedic science-fiction novel by John Scalzi.
Charlie Fitzer is a former business journalist who is financially struggling as a substitute teacher. All he wants to do is take over running his local bar. Then he learns that his estranged rich uncle Jake just died and is asked by Jake's assistant Mathilda 'Til' Morrison to officiate at his funeral. Charlie quickly finds out that literally everyone else at the funeral is there to Make Sure He's Dead. Walking home after the funeral, Charlie finds his cats sitting out on the sidewalk ... and then the house explodes in a fireball.
Uncle Jake was a supervillain. And now Charlie has no choice but to take over the family business.
Despite the name, does not have much to do with Starter Villain.
This work provides examples of the following tropes:
- A Molten Date with Death: Discussed and averted. Til's death faking does not extend to presenting people as having drowned in a Lava Pit. The bodies don't sink. She recommends making it look like the apparent victim was dissolved in acid instead.
- Author Appeal: John Scalzi likes his pet cats. (In fact, the example names Til lists for cats are the names of his actual real-life cats.)
- Better Manhandle the Murder Weapon: Invoked by Tobias when he makes it look like Charlie killed both a government agent and Dobrev.
- Caps Lock: HERA TYPES IN ALL CAPS, JUSTIFIED IN THAT HER KEYBOARD IS SIZED FOR CAT PAWS AND SHE USES ALL FOUR PAWS TO TYPE, SO IT'S DIFFICULT TO HOLD DOWN THE SHIFT KEY.
- Card-Carrying Villain: Uncle Jake and the Lombardy Convocation gleefully called themselves villains.
- Clones Are People, Too: Sort of, the uplifted cats and dolphins are all clones. Hera and her “intern” Persephone have very similar but not identical markings because they were cloned from the same template (like real-life cloned cats). One of the dolphin union’s demands is the right to breed naturally, for both species.
- Crazy-Prepared: Jake Baldwin set up a cover identity for his nephew as soon as he was born and kept it updated. He also had him under continuous surveillance and set up a backup safe house for him just in case he was targeted by Jake's enemies.
- Death Faked for You: Jake's people fake Charlie's death by setting his hotel on fire with a decoy body wearing his old clothes left inside. Til has it left a bit ambiguous since she understands that it may be convenient for Charlie to be alive again later. She also offers death faking as a service to the CIA and other organizations that want to give covert operatives extremely convincing covers.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Charlie does eventually get to quit and go run the bar; after a lot of people try to extort him, kill him, or frame him for murder.
- Even Evil Has Standards:
- When Charlie compares his uncle's subscription-based villainy to "Spotify, but more evil," Til tells him that they're much less evil than Spotify, they pay their creators a living wage except for the dolphins.
- The Lombardy Convocation has standards too. Dobrev is shamed for his pet cat misbehaving while everyone else's sits obediently still. That's because all of the other cats are actually spies.
- Evil, Inc.: Jake Baldwin officially made his money building parking garages. But he also owned a holding company responsible for a large network of corporations that do everything from anti satellite weapons to genetic engineering.
- Faking the Dead: Done by Jake Baldwin in the backstory, which is why when he actually dies everyone but Charlie and the funeral director attends solely to make sure he's dead. Done by Dobrev during the story.
- Formally-Named Pet: Jake Baldwin's "Director of Feline Intelligence" is a cat named Mrs. Tum-Tum.
- Gilded Cage: Averted: after Jake and Dobrev's plans succeed, some of the humans at the final meeting are about to sign Charlie up for lifetime residence on Svalbard to make sure he doesn't tell anyone what's been going on for decades (and a tracker in his neck to make sure he doesn't slip away). Hera calls all of them out, and it's thanks to her that Charlie can go home.
- Hopeless with Tech: The first time Gratas attempts to deliver an ultimatum to Charlie via Zoom he is muted at the start of the call and forgot to encrypt it, so Charlie hangs up on him before either of them can say anything incriminating over an open line. He makes the same mistakes the second call too.
- Hypercompetent Sidekick: Charlie inherits Jake's former assistant Til, who knows the industry inside and out and is his main source of guidance. In the end, it's subverted — Jake left Til in charge and only brought Charlie in as an Unwitting Pawn to help destroy his rivals.
- Initiation Ceremony: The "Pitch and Pitch", where aspiring candidates for funding by the Lombardy Convocation are invited to make a sales pitch where they are subject to being immediately launched into a lake by any of the members. They agree to this because whoever gets thrown the furthest out gets a second chance to make a sale.
- Intellectual Animal: Hera is one of Charlie's pet cats. She is also a spy assigned by Jake to protect him and has a side business on her own as a real-estate investor, where she has accumulated a portfolio worth tens of millions of dollars in only a few years even though she can't talk and communicates with her human staff only by typing out emails on her keyboard. She eventually buys Charlie the bar.
- Jerkass: Plenty, but based on conversation Jake struggled with this, having multiple Jerkass Realization moments inbetween bouts of ruthless and efficient manipulation and business. The letter Charlie gets at the end from right before Jake died has him fully admit that, despite legitimately caring for his nephew, he couldn't help but think of him as a piece to be used in the villain game. He admits it isn't a thing people normally do to those they care about but he already had his plan in motion so he would see it go through. It's only Hera's considerations that prevents Charlie from being thrown out on his ass after his uncle's schemes are done.
- Lack of Empathy: See Jerkass right above. While various characters have varying amounts of empathy, Jake is shown to have this problem very early on, farmed by a note he sent to his nephew with his wedding gifting accurately predicting the length of the marriage. Unlike most examples he's not malicious to those close to him, in fact he's fairly likeable, but he's shown to be villain because he could easily say whatever he needed to whoever he wanted to hear it so they would do what he wanted. Yes, even the nephew he really did care about got pulled in. As shown by Hera being sent by Jake he really did care, but as shown by the end of the plot that didn't stop him from using the people he cared about.
- Lampshade Hanging: Throughout. Combined with World of Snark.
- Last Disrespects: Everyone at Jake's funeral, except for Charlie.
- Make Sure He's Dead: Jake Baldwin apparently had a history of Faking the Dead. So everyone who knew him sent someone to the funeral to make sure he was dead - including planning to stab the apparent corpse or inject air bubbles into its blood vessels.
- Mundane Made Awesome: Scalzi manages to turn several pages of characters having trouble with video conferencing software into Charlie effectively telling off and manipulating Gratas into having the final confrontation on Charlie's territory and on his terms.
- Mutually Assured Destruction: The majority of organizations that paid Jake Baldwin for the privilege of shooting down satellites with his giant laser do so because their competitors bought the same service, they didn't actually plan on using it.
- Nazi Gold: Charlie is told that Jake hid a large stash of valuables looted in WWII-era Europe and kept for decades by the Lombardy Convocation. After Dobrev is apparently killed; Charlie makes a deal to buy off the rest of the Lombardy Convocation's current members with it. But there is no stash, only empty crates. It was a set-up by Dobrev and Jake to get the Convocation's members to kill each other.
- Nebulous Evil Organisation: The Lombardy Convocation.
- Noodle Incident: Do not go swimming with angry dolphins.
- Only Cares About Inheritance: Justified — Charlie has plenty of debts and no relationship with Jake, so he understandably plays along when he's offered a house just to officiate Jake's funeral. It's when he goes above and beyond to prevent Jake's body from being abused that he gets drawn into Jake's business.
- Protection Racket: One of the ways that Jake Baldwin made very large amounts of money was what Charlie dubbed "mutually assured destruction as a subscription service" — for example, he had a laser that could shoot down government satellites, and let governments purchase standing orders to use it on their enemies if those enemies ever paid him to use it on them.
- Psycho for Hire: Tobias "the Stabber," who's first introduced trying to stab Jake's corpse and works as a hitman for the Lombardy Convocation. He also used to date Til. In the end it turns out he was a Double Agent for Jake and Dobrev all along. And he's still dating Til.
- Ray Gun: One of Jake's businesses got paid to develop a prototype antisatellite laser weapon. Then they built a larger one, which all governments with large numbers of satellites pay them to not use. Charlie uses it to destroy a satellite the Lombardy Convocation is using to communicate with their spies around the island.
- Right-Hand Cat: Jake Baldwin and then Charlie have this literally with Hera, Persephone, and the other super-intelligent spy cats. The members of the Lombardy Convocation have adopted having pet cats as a deliberate appropriation of the aesthetic of Ernst Stavro Blofeld from James Bond. But they don't know that all but one of their cats are spies Jake and Til put in place.
- Sapient Cetaceans: They are organized and have grievances.
- Shout-Out: Many. Including James Bond, The Fugitive, Indiana Jones, and The Hunger Games.
- The Social Expert: Zig-zagged with Jake. On the one hand, he ran rings around the Lombardy Convocation and could predict to the day how long Charlie's marriage would last. On the other hand, he told Charlie the expiration date without explanation or sympathy. Til admits that he knew how people worked, but not quite how to deal with them.
- Strike Episode: The first thing Charlie encounters when arriving at the island volcano base is the dolphins' picket line. At the climax of the story, he negotiates an end to the strike by recognizing their union and meeting their demands, then encourages them to unionize the antagonists' whales.
- Spy Speak: An extended conversation between Til and a CIA operative about a cat is revealed to be an elaborate Trust Password.
- Thanatos Gambit: Jake knew he was dying and arranged with Dobrev to take the Lombardy Convocation down with him.
- The Call Knows Where You Live: Charlie doesn't want to get involved with Jake's business. Then his house blows up.
- Tech Bro: The pitchees at the Convocation's "Pitch and Pitch" are all young men asking for money to fund their premium compost or app-controlled testicles ideas, you really can't feel sorry for the ones who get thrown in the lake. Charlie notes that Til is the only woman in the room who isn't a waitress, and the other Convocation members get mad when she presses the "pitch" button.
- The "Fun" in "Funeral": The funeral director is quite amused at some of flower arrangements Charlie receives at the funeral home, which were sent by Jake's supervillain antagonists and celebrate the fact that he's dead in various obscene ways. The funeral director is less amused when one of the attendees tries to stab the body.
- Title Drop: Near the end, and it's used as an insult to the protagonist, from someone who thinks himself a proper villain.
- Translator Collar: Hera, Persephone, and the other spy cats communicate with their human colleagues using specialized keyboards connected to computer displays. The dolphins have a similar system controlled using underwater microphones. The bad guy's whales also have some means of translating into English, although it seems to be less refined than the dolphins' microphones.
- Unexpected Successor: All of Jake's enemies are trying to understand who Charlie is and what to do about him now that he is apparently in charge of an organization explicitly equated in power to several nation-states. That was all part of the plan.
- Uplifted Animal: Uplifted cats act as Jake's surveillance and middle-management. The uplifted dolphins are labor and are unionized. Other villains have uplifted humpback whales working for them.
- Upper-Class Twit: Most members of the Lombardy Convocation inherited their positions and come from old money, but are very bad at managing said money. In fact, aside from Dobrev they're all broke.
- Villain with Good Publicity: Deliberately cultivated by some members of the Lombardy Convocation. Jake Baldwin instead went with a strategy of 'villain with no publicity', such that news reports of his death are focused on how extremely boring of a billionaire he allegedly was.
- Volcano Lair: Quite a nice one, acquired by Jake Baldwin at a discount and with plenty of geothermal power. It used to be a joint UK/US intelligence operation that got sold off to developers when the Cold War ended.
- Weather-Control Machine: What the Chac-4 laser officially is for, and all that the smaller versions Jake Baldwin sold to the US government are capable of, however uncle Jake kept a more powerful version with enough range to write on the Moon.
- Weird Trade Union: Of dolphins. And later of whales.
- World of Snark: As expected for a John Scalzi book.
