true crime

A few thoughts:  a novelist named Westlake (?) died New Year's Eve (more than I did that night).  Turns out he wrote mostly crime fiction but got his start writing true crime short stories.  The formula?  Sin, suffer, repent.  His first was about a woman who slept with her husband's boss to see that he got a promotion.  She goes through with it only to learn that he would have gotten the promotion anyway.  Interesting to try this out ten times and see if a few were worth developing into a somethin' somethin'.  Another interesting comment was, the difference between the criminal and the crime novelist is that the former can work out all the logistics of committing a crime; the latter can do all that but can also imagine getting caught.  Sounded a bit wishful (lots of crimes go unsolved), but point taken.  requiescat in pace.