A professional assassin with a conscience and his chequered life (IANS Column: Bookends)

Humans, possibly following some atavistic but ingrained impulse, are initially geared up to recognise a binary value system, but most soon learn that our world, and its people, are too complex to be slotted into just two options.

This, and the realisation that not everyone obeys the rules, to their obvious benefit, leads to appreciation for the anti-hero, or protagonists with their own value systems.

That may help to explain why we have a sneaking admiration or interest, at least in fictional characters whose "heroic" credentials are quite vague as to morality, say James Bond, or his equally lethal but less glamorous American counterpart, Donald Hamilton's Matt Helm.

Or for that matter, those compelled to take the law into their own hands, vigilante style an entire host, spanning various genres and media, from Don Pendleton's Mack Bolan, alias the Executioner, to V from "V for Vendetta", to Paul Kersey

Disclaimer: This post has been auto-published from an agency feed without any modifications to the text and has not been reviewed by an editor