The World's Even Dumber Criminals (2022)

This was the sequel to another book, The World’s Dumbest Criminals. I wasn’t involved with the original book, so I didn’t care for the “even dumber” title, but the project fell in my lap, and it was interesting to write – much more than I expected.

One of the publisher’s guidelines was to avoid stories where the “dumb” criminals are in their own way victims, or at least rather sad figures – drug addicts or people with mental health issues. I fully agreed with that. Comedy shouldn’t punch down. So I looked for stories where the criminals were smart enough to plan a crime, but overlooked some obvious flaws. The sort of “dumb” you can laugh at.

Many stories were drawn from newspaper reports. They often reported the strangest parts of a crime, but the hard part was figuring out why the criminal did what they did, or what happened after they were arrested and the media had lost interest. As a writer, you’re mostly working from the middle of the story.

One of the most remarkable stories was a German con artist during the Second World War. He wanted a car for a scheme he was planning, so he posed as a Nazi official and tried to con one out of the local police.