The Rules of Supervillainy

Gary Karkofsky is an ordinary man living an ordinary life in a world full of supervillains, heroes and monsters. When the superhero of his hometown dies, Gary ends up with the dead champion's magical cloak.

He decides he would sooner be rich than good. So he takes up crime under a new name: Merciless, the Supervillain Without Mercy.

The trouble is where he does it. Falconcrest City is the most crime-ridden city in America, and its criminals are among the toughest around. Gary has to work out whether he is evil enough to last among them.

He does not work alone. His long-suffering wife is on his side, as is an ex-girlfriend who now works as a professional henchwoman, and a has-been evil mastermind who knows the trade. The tone is comic, with a villain's career told as an office-job-style struggle to get ahead.

The question the book turns on is what sort of villain Gary becomes, and whether the people around him end up needing exactly that.