The Oxford Book of Villains is a collection of excerpts from books purporting to deal with villains of all kinds. I had hoped to find help as to how to write evil. But if the Book has any raison d'etre above venerating old classics, its merely discouraging readers from a life of crime and heresy.Perhaps the Oxford Book of Villains is aiming for some sort of purpose or mood, and I've missed it. I tend to give anything that so much effort has been put into the benefit of the doubt. It desperately needs that doubt in order for me to see even a flicker of imagination in its careful categorization of The Spirit of Evil, Master Crooks, Minor Crooks, Murderers...In each case, the book maintains a shocked, Victorian distance from the subject matter, and lingers on each text only long enough to persuade the reader that indeed, the subject is very naughty and deserves jail.