All my perfect crimes involve the use of a time machine.  All i need to do is wait for my future self to send one back to me.  I hope he gets around to it soon.

I can't remember which in which book (maybe The Eiger Sanction) Trevanian described an art heist where the thieves had had forgeries of the artworks they planned to steal made up and then, when they stole the originals, replaced those originals with the forgeries.  The kicker was that the thieves then vandalized the forgeries to make it look like the originals had been vandalized and not stolen.  Trevanian wrote in a footnote to a later book (Shibumi, perhaps, it's the only other book I remember reading) that he could not reveal the details of some other fictitious crime because somebody had actually used this idea to commit an art-burglary.  Such incredible conceit, but I liked the books a lot at the time (I was about 12).

More than the exploding neck-manacle, it's the shot-gun cane I like the best because it is a) completely fantastic and b) peripheral and unnecessary to the actual plot.  I believe Vladmir Putin uses the exact same model when he is out on the streets of Moscow solving crimes.

You've heard of using an icicle as a murder weapon, which melts after you use it leaving no evidence. I had the idea of robbing a bank, and using an icemobile as my getaway car.

A long time ago, I read a story about a woman who bashed in her husband's brains with a frozen leg of lamb, and then cooked it.  She even offered a piece to the investigating officer.  Of course, that wouldn't work now what with NCIS type investigations. She'd be caught when they found lamb molecules in the dead guy's hair.

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine

My favorite bank robbery concept was Bill Murray's (or rightly I suppose it belongs to the writers Jay Cronley and Howard Franklin) in the 1990 film Quick Change. Haven't seen it in quite awhile but at the time I thought it was the funniest first 30 minutes to a movie I'd ever seen. It doesn't end terribly but it's just not possible to top the heist concept.

Bill Murray is a clown who robs a bank. He takes hostages, except 2 of them are plants. He puts the money on the plants -- Randy Quaid and Geena Davis -- then releases them with a couple other hostages. After brief questioning, the police let them go. Finally, Murray's character locks the rest of the hostages in the vault, gets out of the clown costume and releases a final hostage -- himself, leaving the cops to believe that the crisis is still unfolding inside the bank. If you're a Bill Murray fan, you know he pulls this all off brilliantly.

make it rain you nappy headed ho's

I was very intrigued by the pizza bomber case when it first happened. It's almost like an X-Files episode, in fact, I think it was an early X-Files episode. It's sort of a terror catch-22 -- being forced to commit a crime at the pain of death.

In a sense, this new evidence vindicates the police. The man who died was part of the plot and not a completely innocent victim as he had claimed. Still, I don't understand why the police didn't endeavor more keenly to free him from the bomb. Even if he was lying about being a pawn -- which he apparently was -- it still would have behooved investigators to ensure his survival for continued questioning. It's hardly surprising that given his capture his fellow conspirators pulled the trigger on him to ensure he couldn't rat them out.

I can see this being an "ingenious" plan in a movie or while you're high on drugs but I do understand the police's skepticism in dealing with the man's story. It did (apparently) turn out he was lying. But it's still a scary proposition and I still feel the cops screwed it up a bit.

make it rain you nappy headed ho's