Blackmail Backfires in Literature.
- Larry Niven's short story "$16,949". A blackmail victim tries to blackmail his blackmailer, who goes to another one of his victims to resolve the problem permanently.
- 87th Precinct:
- In the Back Story of Ax, an accountant found out one client was a tax cheat and tried to blackmail him. The client told his Italian-American boss, who attempted to Scare 'Em Straight by claiming to be mob-connected and saying he'd kill the accountant if he tried anything again. The accountant was scared, but still blackmailed another client. To avoid his boss's wrath, he enlisted an accomplice (the Victim of the Week) to meet the blackmail victim and claim to have found the incriminating papers during a burglary. This whole subplot is a Red Herring, as the blackmail victim died of natural causes years ago and the accountant isn't the killer either.
- In Long Time No See, the blind and impoverished first victim is killed for trying to blackmail a war buddy over an Unfriendly Fire incident after crossing the Despair Event Horizon.
- In Alguien debe morir by José Luis Martin Vigil, Lucas Paz attempts to blackmail José Reyes, threatening to expose accusations of homosexuality. Instead, Reyes hit Paz with a blunt item found aroung Paz's house. However, Reyes didn't land the killing blow: it was Evencia, Paz's landlady, who, thinking he was dead, robbed him and, when surprised he was still alive, brained him with a hammer.
- The plot of Apt Pupil involves Todd Bowden discovering that his neighbor Kurt Dussander is an escaped Nazi and the former commander of a concentration camp. Todd is morbidly obsessed with the Holocaust, and he forces Dussander to tell him about the concentration camp by threatening to expose his past. Dussander complies for a few months, but eventually decides he's had enough. He points out that, by not exposing him sooner, Todd is now complicit in hiding Dussander from the authorities — Todd can't expose Dussander without exposing himself to punishment as well. To further twist the knife, Dussander claims that he left a complete account of Todd's actions in a bank deposit box, to be opened and read if Dussander dies. He's lying about the safe deposit box. But the psychological strain of being counter-blackmailed is one of several factors that leads to Todd completely snapping at the end of the story.
- Several murder victims in Baroness Ozcry's The Old Man In The Corner series are blackmailers, although at other times, blackmailers fake thefts to further their schemes and pull Karma Houdinis. In another story, the trope is non-fatally played straight when a man tries to blackmail a couple into stealing valuable jewelry that has been entrusted to them and they fake the theft of the jewelry (while having it mysteriously reappear later) in a way that implicates him. This forces the blackmailer to go on the run and ensures that no one will believe him if he ever tries to publicize his blackmail material.
- The Business Of Dying has two instances of blackmail backfiring on Miriam Fox. Blackmail A backfired, because the person she was blackmailing said they didn't care if she revealed her information, because it would be 'the word of some junkie prostitute' against a rather respectable person. Blackmail B ended up getting her killed.
- One of Agatha Christie's unspoken rules is that any person who stoops to blackmail will be dead by the end of the story. It's not always because threatening murderers with exposure tends to lead to getting murdered, but this is very common.
- The Murder of Roger Ackroyd has a rather indirect version. Ms. Ferrars is blackmailed and commits suicide, but mails a letter to Roger Ackroyd telling who blackmailed her. Ackroyd is then killed before he can dox the blackmailer (and the letter is burned), but the case draws Hercule Poirot's attention, and he catches the blackmailer turned murderer.
- This was the final resolution of Appointment with Death, in which an Evil Matriarch is slain while on vacation with her family in Petra. While there are plenty of suspects, not only among her own terrorized family but among the fellow travelers, she was also a retired prison warden, and was killed by a woman who'd been in her prison but rose to high society after she got out, and was trying to avoid blackmail by the warden after she said "I never forget a face."
- Invoked and Exploited in The Moving Finger, where Miss Marple enlists someone into acting as The Bait by blackmailing the killer. Sure enough, the killer is caught trying to murder their blackmailer later that night and is arrested on the spot.
- In The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side, one character is shown trying blackmail on several others. One of them responds lethally via Medication Tampering.
- The blackmailer's usual fate is avoided in A Pocket Full of Rye, although admittedly they did give the money back.
- In The City Without Memory, Veri-Meri tries to blackmail his way out of arrest and memory-wipe execution by shouting he knows the dirty secrets of his captors and has it all written down. The problem is that writing is forbidden in the land – on pain of memory wipe.
- In the backstory of The Dark Half, the protagonist Thad Beaumont is a not well-known writer, who published several thrillers while using the pen-name of George Stark (said thrillers being a lot more successful than his mainstream work). A man named Fred Clawson discovers the link between Beaumont and Stark, then tries to blackmail Beaumont, threatening to reveal to the media that Beaumont and Stark are the same person. Beaumont was already pondering to stop writing as Stark, and this threat is the final push he needs to do so. He reveals his second identity to the media himself, staging some mock funerals to symbolise Stark's death, and thus prevents Clawson from gaining anything. This was actually a series of events which happened before the novel's beginning. In the proper novel, a being with Stark's mind comes to life and starts a murderous trip to reach Beaumont with the intent of becoming fully human. One of his first victims is the unsuccessful blackmailer, as a revenge because the blackmail attempt was partly responsible for Stark's "death".
- On The Day of the Jackal and its adaptations, one of the people who provide gadgets for the Jackal (the documents forger in the original novel and the first film, the manufacturer of the radio-controlled Sentry Gun device on The Jackal) try to blackmail more money out of the Jackal (and respectively commit the dumb acts of not bowing to the Jackal's one request of meeting elsewhere for payment and going to a far-away location with the Jackal and the fully-assembled high-caliber machine-gun that he built the radio-controlled support for). Nobody laments them.
- The Dinner: Beau's attempts to blackmail his adoptive brother Rick and cousin Michel with footage of their murder of the homeless woman not only fail, but also cost him his life as Rick and Michel ultimately murder him.
- In the Dirk Pitt novel Vixen 03, Pitt and lover Congresswoman Loren Smith are secretly photographed during a tryst. Fellow Congressman Daggat tries to use the photos to force Loren to back one of his plans, saying the photos will ruin her and Pitt's Senator father. However, Pitt interrupts a meeting to note that Daggat has no leverage as Pitt's father is considering retiring soon anyway. He then says he's already gotten Daggat's accomplice to spill the beans. As Pitt states, which is a bigger scandal: Two unmarried adults carrying on a relationship or a Congressman blackmailing a colleague to get his own way? Realizing Pitt is right, Daggat is forced to back down.Pitt: Congressman Daggat is about to retire from the blackmail game. He doesn't have the talent for it. He wouldn't last ten minutes against a tried and true professional.
Daggat: Like yourself?
Pitt: No, like my father. - In Mr. Pottermack's Oversight, one of the Dr. Thorndyke novels, Mr. Pottermack has spent years rebuilding his life under a new name after fleeing a conviction for a crime he didn't commit. He is recognized by someone from his old life, who attempts to blackmail him with the threat of revealing his identity to the authorities, but he turns out to be dangerous with his back against the wall and the result is one dead blackmailer.
- Averted in Going Postal. Reacher Gilt muses you can safely hire Mr. Gryle for assassinations and similar dirty deeds without fear of him turning around to blackmail you, specifically because of this trope: It will inevitably lead to one party killing the other, and if Mr. Gryle wanted that he wouldn't waste time with intermediate steps.
- I Heard That Song Before:
- As a six year old, Kay overheard a woman blackmailing a man for money, and years later wonders if the woman was Susan Althorp (who disappeared that same night) and that was why she was murdered. It turns out it was Susan, blackmailing Richard Walker for drug money after she found out he was stealing paintings and replacing them with copies, and he indeed killed her to keep her quiet.
- Alexandra Lloyd tries to blackmail Richard about the forgeries she made for him, prompting him to murder her as well.
- In the In Death novel Witness in Death, someone learns the identity of the murderer of actor Richard Draco and because this person didn't like Draco, is willing to keep the identity a secret but isn't above trying to get money from the murderer by blackmail. It backfires horribly, with the murderer tricking him into hanging himself!
- I've Got You Under My Skin: After Jane is revealed to be Betsy's killer, thus freeing them from any suspicion, Regina, Nina and Alison go straight to the cops about Josh's attempt to blackmail them over incriminating recordings he made of them, using the copies he gave them as proof. Josh is swiftly arrested.
- Jaine Austen Mysteries:
- In Death by Pantyhose, Vic Cleveland blackmailed Reagan Dixon over her past as a porn actress, both to force her to get him a valuable network deal and to marry him. Out of all the people Vic was blackmailing, this was the one he shouldn't have, as she saw him dead.
- In Pampered to Death, Jaine tries to blackmail Delphine into not revealing Prozac nearly ate one of The Haven's koi fish by threatening to blow the whistle on her snack peddling. Delphine just shoots back that Olga wouldn't fire her because Delphine knows Olga is the one who killed Mallory... except, as it turns out, she isn't.
- In Death of a Bachelorette, the victim, Hope Harper, tried blackmailing Spencer into marrying her by threatening to release photos of him in his dog collar fetish. Hoo boy, did that backfire...
- In Death of a Gigolo Tommy realized that "Daisy Kincaid" is actually his aunt Emma Shimmel, who murdered the real Daisy and took her place. To keep his mouth shut, he made her buy him whatever his black little heart desired, which was to end with him marrying her, getting loaded in a divorce settlement, and likely keep his blackmail train running. Daisy got another idea, if you get the drift...
- Julius Katz: Several stories involve blackmail victims killing their blackmailers.
- Two were Properly Paranoid enough to try and arrange for either Great Detective Julius or his assistant Archie (not knowing Archie is just an A.I. and a voice on the phone) to be present near the blackmail drop to deter any murderous plans, but in each case, the detective didn't show and the blackmailer still died.
- In "Julius and the Sliced Ham," Julius says he doesn't mind seeing the killer of a blackmailer walk free except for how the case going unsolved will ruin his best friend's investments, and tells the killer to compensate the man while denying the accusations that this makes him a blackmailer himself by saying he is simply ensuring fair compensation for what the crime cost an innocent party. Julius is lying to make the killer incriminate himself in front of hidden cops, and suspects the man was only pretending to agree to his demands and would have killed him too.
- One plotline in Life's Lottery features you uncovering evidence of Sean Rye's white collar crimes and having the opportunity to confront him with it; if you play your cards right, you can use it to claim a promotion and eventually become his successor... but if you try to demand regular fees from him, Sean will resolve the situation by having you quietly bumped off.
- In Making Money, a craftsman making a copy of Lord Vetinari's signet ring for the Lord-V-obsessed Cosmo Lavish bumps up his price considerably to "forget" he made it (the ring is made of a highly illegal material only available to licensed Assassins), and then a bit more because Cosmo's secretary agreed to the first price increase too quickly. The secretary reluctantly lets Cosmo's personal assassin deal with the problem.
- Later on, Cosmo and his newfound criminal friend Cribbins stake their plans on the belief Moist will go along with their planned blackmail. The entire thing collapses when Moist instead confesses to a lifetime of con artistry in public court, derailing his trial until new evidence appears against Cosmo.
- This trope also frequently pops up in the Nero Wolfe mysteries:
- Fer-de-lance, the first novel in the series, starts the pattern with the reveal that Carlo Maffei, the missing man whose disappearance caused Wolfe and Archie Goodwin to get involved in the case, unwittingly designed a tool that was used as a murder weapon and, on realising this, thought that blackmailing the person who hired him was a good idea. Naturally, he was very much mistaken.
- Too Many Clients also plays it straight, as Maria Perez attempts to blackmail Thomas Yeager's murderer, only to be murdered herself.
- An interesting variant pops up in And Be a Villain, in which it's revealed a blackmail syndicate has been targeting people with slander in order to pressure them into paying up to get it to stop. The variant is that the blackmailers in this case actually made up false stories about their victims that would nevertheless do serious damage to their reputations if it got out, but they ended up approaching someone with what they thought was a lie about them committing murder only to realise too late that they'd accidentally stumbled onto the truth. It ends about the same way you'd expect this trope to end for a blackmailer in a murder mystery. The same syndicate also apparently tried to avert this trope by only putting their victims on the hook for a single year before cutting them loose, with the reasoning being that someone being blackmailed indefinitely will eventually get sick of it and do something that will lead to a Backfire, whereas someone given a good-faith guarantee that the unpleasantness will only be temporary is more likely to simply resign themselves to it.
- No Gods for Drowning: Alexander Stathos tries to blackmail the goddess Aeda into saving the city of Valentine from rising waters and hungry sea demons and abort her plan to rip out the souls of humanity to turn them into immortal monsters by capturing Aeda's mother Medes and using her fate against Aeda. This doesn't work, and Aeda responds by ripping out his organs.
- Needless to say, Sherlock Holmes dealt with this a couple of times:
- In the story "The Adventure Of The Reigate Squire" features butler William Kirwan being shot seemingly while trying to stop a burglar from robbing the home of his masters, Alec Cunningham and his father. Holmes's investigation reveals that Alec Cunningham murdered Kirwan because he learned about the Cunninghams' breaking into the house of another local squire named Acton. The Cunninghams robbed Acton to try and steal a document that was a key part of his lawsuit against them for half their estate, but was actually kept in his lawyer's safe. Kirwan tried to blackmail the Cunninghams, but as Holmes later noted Alec was a very dangerous man to play such a game with.
- A much more dramatic example is "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton", whose title character is a blackmailer. Sherlock and Watson are determined to destroy papers that he has that he intends to publish to ruin various powerful men of society. While they're burglarizing his house, a woman shows up ostensibly visiting him to give him more dirt on someone. She isn't — she is a woman whose life Charles has ruined and she's there to kill him so he can't ruin any more lives. Sherlock and Watson, for their part, do absolutely nothing to prevent Milverton being murdered, electing instead to throw as much of the blackmail material as they can into the lit fireplace before fleeing the scene and when Lestrade comes asking for help Holmes gives him a Sarcastic Confession before saying certain crimes justify private revenge.
- The short story "The Well" by W.W. Jacobs (better known for "The Monkey's Paw") features an unscrupulous Impoverished Patrician, Wilfred, attempting to shake down his cousin Jem to cover a debt. Jem responds in the traditional way, and with a different author the story might have ended there. However, Jem's proto-Perky Goth fiancee Olive has an odd fondness for the crumbling old well in an overgrown corner of the manor park...
