In a contemporary story from suspense novelist John Connolly, The Black Angel, the author describes the relationship among genetics, envicronment/experiences, & personal determination, or free will. He acknowledges the power of genetics & envicronment, but then notes that for evil to be truly evil, it must be freely chosen & not merely a necessary & inevitable by-product.

His main character, detective Charlie Parker, begins his contemplation with a paradox: "Theirs was a human evil, a product of their own flawed natures."

But then he sorts it out more completely, continuing, "Faulty genetics might have played a part in what they became, or childhood abuse. . . . But free will also played a part, for I did not doubt that a time came for most of those men and women when they . . . made a decision to snuff [someone else's life] out. . . . It was there that true evil lay, in the moment between thought & action, between intent & commission, when, for a fleeting instant there was still the possibility that one might turn away & refuse to appease the dark, gaping desire within. Perhpas it was in this moment that human wretchedness encountered something worse, something deeper & older that was both familiar in the resonance that it found within our souls, yet alien in its nature & its antiquity, an evil that predated our own & dwarfed it with its magnitude. There are as many forms of evil in the world as there are men to commit them, & its gradations are near infinite, but it may be that, in truth, it all draws from the same deep well, & there are things that have supped from it for far longer than any of us could ever imagine" (493-494).