How revealing should we be?

No, I'm not reprising Nipplegate in honor of the Super Bowl. I'm worried about how much to reveal to my reader and when to reveal it.
I know we've talked about this before, but I'm in the middle of revising a suspense novel where I made the very interesting decision to tell the reader everything that every bad guy was doing as he was doing it and what he was thinking while he was doing it. It has created a book that my editor described as being like watching a chess game.
I've now pulled every scene from the bad guys' points of view and put them in a separate file. I'm going to print everything out and figure out what goes back in and when and where it goes back in. I spent a lot of time and thought on these bad guys. I know a lot about them. I'm thinking the reader doesn't have to know quite as much.
The whole question is how much to reveal and when to reveal it. Do I keep their identities secret? Do I obfuscate who does what? Or why they're doing it? I don't know. I hope my exercise in separating out the threads works because this puppy is due Friday and that's just not that far away.
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Published on February 07, 2011 18:45
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