Crime Doesn't Pay: A collection of crime themed short stories

'Crime Doesn't Pay'
Sound advice.

It's been almost a year since I published my last book 'Santa and the Naughty Elf'*, but my next book is finally ready for publication.

* Strictly speaking, 'Santa And The Naughty Elf' is by Charles Fudgemuffin’s younger brother, Charles Fudgemuffin, Jr, but his writing style is curiously similar to Charles senior. Hmm…

The book in question is 'Crime Doesn't Pay' and it's a collection of crime themed light-hearted short stories. This is the list of short stories which are included:

1) Is A KitKat A Chocolate Bar Or A Biscuit?

2) Walk Again

3) The Cashier Who Didn’t Work Saturdays

4) True Freedom

5) The Puppet Master

6) The Absence Of Fear

7) Wagon Wheels, Star Wars Memorabilia And The Nice Ham

8) Gravity

9) A Parcel For Your Neighbour

10) How To Poison Your Husband And Get Away With It

. . . . . . . .

This is the blurb for 'Crime Doesn't Pay' which describes my general approach when writing the book:

An alternative cover which I considered for the book.

"Modern media seems to have an ever increasing tendency to tell crime stories where in the end the villain walks off into the sunset millions of pounds the richer.

However, in my opinion committing criminal acts is not something that should be portrayed in a positive light because firstly, it’s irresponsible, and secondly, in the majority of cases, it’s also misleading. In real life, criminals generally end up dead, or looking over their shoulder, or in jail, or meeting some other unfortunate and undesirable end.

So with this collection of short stories, I wanted to differ from the increasingly popular formula and instead tell stories where the criminals end up in a bit of a pickle. As a result, none of the criminals in the included stories walk off into the sunset millions of pounds richer.  Some of them perhaps emerge more unscathed than they deserve, but none of the criminals profit from their crimes.

Some of the stories are quite silly, and those stories are written under my usual pen name of Charles Fudgemuffin.  However, on a couple of occasions the subject matter follows a more serious tone, so on those occasions I’ve used my more serious alternative pen name, namely…

‘Charles Futch-Moffin’

As you can tell, it took me quite a while to think of that name!

Finally, this book contains some scenes of violence, but wherever violence is featured I’ve tried to make it functional rather than indulgent."

. . . . . . . .

The three covers which I considered.

To elaborate on the actual book itself, my previous books have generally had a silly tone to them, but given that crime is a serious subject I initially tried to write this book with a more serious approach. However, my naturally daft nature came out in the writing, so most of the stories didn't turn out as serious as I originally intended!

Finally, thanks to everyone who voted for a book cover and helped me decide which cover to choose. The vote was very close between the 'blood splatters' cover and the 'ripped leather' cover but in the end I decided that the 'blood splatters' looked a little too serious, whereas the ripped leather cover more accurately reflected the tone of the book, so I ultimately decided to go with the ripped leather cover.

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Update: In the end, I decided that 'Crime Doesn't Pay' was too generic a title, and that it didn't really capture the silly personality of the featured short stories. I therefore decided to rebrand the book based on the final short story in the collection, namely 'How To Poison Your Husband And Get Away With It'.

'Crime Doesn't Pay' 'How To Poison Your Husband And Get Away With It, and Other Short Stories' is now available to purchase for kindle from Amazon.