STATUS: It’s almost 6:30 p.m. and I’m shaking my head as to why I didn’t accomplish more during the work day…
What’s playing on the iPod right now? EVERY MORNING by Sugar Ray
Media Bistro is a fountain of good stories lately. Despite the gory nature of this news clip, I just had to laugh. If you are a writer and you commit a crime, don’t write about it in your “novel.”
I mean, duh. This doesn’t even qualify as a decent rant because really, how stupid can some people be?
Polish Writer Convicted of Murder He Described in Novel (AP)Fishermen dragged the dead man’s body — hands bound behind his back and tied to a noose around his neck — from the cold waters of the Oder River in Poland in December 2000. Police struggled to dig up any clues until a tip five years later led them to a novel with an eerily similar murder — and its author, Krystian Bala, who suspected the victim of having an affair with his estranged wife.
Or at least wait until you’re already acquitted. *coughOJcough*
Actually Media Bistro is coming quite late to this story, which appeared in the Guardian a month ago and was widely reported elsewhere (on rightreading, for example).
Apparently people can be pretty darned stupid.
Isn’t there another novel in this? Novelist writes about murder he’s committed. Will he get away with it? Seemingly so. What does he do in the intervening years? Is he planning another murder? Will he write about that one too? Could be fun.
Linnea
linnea,
No, better: Murderer suggests plot idea to would-be novelist acquaintance, who wants to write a murder mystery but can’t come up with good plot. Novelist gets convicted of crime, and murderer gets away with it.
No, wait! Murderer suggests plot to friend who in turn has a friend who’s an aspiring mystery novelist, and … Nah. It’s getting too complicated.
And I’ve always considered writers to be fairly intelligent…
LOL!!! I’m not sure if the man was operating under stupidity or just plain arrogance. But either way, stupidity won out!
I just watched a CSI episode like this a week or so ago. I won’t give up the motivation, for those of you who haven’t seen it.
OMG, how dopey can you get?
I’m just glad the authorities caught up with him, and he got his just desserts.
~jerseygirl
Yeah, that might be taking “research” a bit too far.
HEre’s another one: Don’t cry to the Pope (THE POPE!) about your missing child and then turn up as the key suspects via blood evidence….. The McCann’s. How long until THAT is a book? No happy ending. Very sad.
Now that is taking a risk. I’d say it’s even risky writing about a crime that you might commit, even in fictional terms. Such writing, and thinking, might come back to haunt a person.
Maybe he watched Basic Instinct too many times, wasn’t her defence that she’d never commit a murder just like the one in her book? Maybe he was hoping Michael Douglas would come and investigate or something.
Perhaps he should have entitled it, “If I Did It.” Oh wait, that one is already taken. :/
Sounds like he took the “write what you know” advice too literally.
There should be an award for someone that freakin stupid.
But there is an award for people that stupid, Mrs. Rant–they just have to die without issue in order to receive it.
Pardon my tongue in cheek. “There should be award for someone that … stupid” made me think of the Darwin awards.