Crissy Harkinson in The Last One Left by John D. MacDonald (1966)Read about the other entries on the list.
MacDonald wrote several femme fatales but none better than the truly evil Crissy Harkinson in one of his best standalone novels. She is the definition of ruthless, a woman who will stop at absolutely nothing to get what she wants. To that end she is willing to use every weapon in her arsenal, and she is pitiless. Characters like this can come across as oversimplified, or else misogynistic, but MacDonald was such an astute chronicler of the human condition that Crissy is a fully realized character, far more interesting than MacDonald’s most famous villain, Max Cady from his novel The Executioners, more popularly known as Cape Fear in the two film versions.
See John Mullan's ten best femmes fatales in literature.
--Marshal Zeringue
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