In action adventure novels there often comes a time when our protagonist can rid themselves of the Bad Guy. A proper hero-style protagonist will not kill the Bad Guy at this time. This allows for the book to contain more pages. It also allows the Bad Guy to kill some innocents or other Good Guys.

In The Venetian Betrayal, our hero-protagonits (not to be confused with Hiro Protagonist) fails to kill the Bad Girl. He kills other less important Bad Guys throughout the book so we know he’s OK with doing it… dumb. Make characters consistent and believable.

Mitch Rapp, the hero-protagonist of many Vince Flynn novels doesn’t hesitate to do what needs done.

I’m not saying I want my protagonists to be cold-blooded killers, but I want them to be consistent. If you’re not going to kill the Big Bad Girl then don’t kill the henchmen, either.

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