Utopia, you are standing in it!

In August, Columbophile posted initial details for a July 2018 ColumboCon in Ossining, New York. These plans included a “Columbo mystery-writing competition.”

What that entails exactly, we do not know. But it suggests that Columbo fans will be solicited to submit their own Columbo stories and scripts – a very enticing prospect.

If so, how do you go about writing a Columbo? This is a subject to which I have given considerable thought. Here are the five key steps I think you need if you want to craft the perfect Columbo.

Step 1 – The perfect villain

Abigail Mitchell has many of the qualities we seek for in a ‘perfect’ Columbo killer

We are all familiar with the typical Columbo villain: accomplished in a respected field, supremely self-confident, and quick-witted. Some are rich, all are successful. Some are arrogant, none suffer fools lightly. Some are smart, others…

As regular readers know, the BBC’s English language services did not report any of the fourteen separate incidents of missile attacks by terrorist groups located either in the Gaza Strip or the Sinai Peninsula that took place between January and November 2017. Multiple mortar attacks on an IDF position that were launched from the Gaza Strip by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad on November 30^th were mentioned in a BBC report on another topic.

On December 7^th three missiles were launched from the Gaza Strip.

“Two rockets fired from the Gaza Strip fell inside the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and did not reach Israeli territory, but set off rocket sirens in the Hof Ashkelon and Sha’ar HaNegev regional councils, as well as the city of Sdreot. 

A Jihadist Salafi group in Gaza called the Al-Tawheed Brigades […] claimed responsibility for the first two launches. […]

A third rocket, of…

We often joke about the “evil twin defense” and have seen a few actual cases (here and here and here and here). However, I just came across a case from earlier this year where Richard Anthony Jones (left) had an apparent twin who was no relation but a dead ringer for the man.  So similar that the Kansas man spent 17 years in prison for a 1999 robbery that he may not have committed.

The section 44 juggernaut just keeps rolling. The next question likely to come before the court as a consequence of Jacqui Lambie’s disqualification on dual citizenship grounds is whether her likely replacement, Devonport mayor, Steve Martin, is himself disqualified, for holding an “office of profit under the Crown”, with respect to his office in local government. Martin maintains that he is on solid ground, citing advice given by the then Clerk of the Senate ahead of the 2016 election.

Indeed, history suggests he has a strong case.

A few clicks south of the Equator about 1,400 miles off the northern coast of Fiji, the island of Nauru is only eight square miles in land area — an oval-shaped slab that is located in the epitome of no man’s land. Its closest neighbors (in clockwise order) are the Marshall Islands, Kiribati, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, and the Federated States of Micronesia. The smallest independent country on Earth, Nauru has a story that is seemingly fitted to occupy an obscure section in Ripley’s Believe It Or Not! 

Flash back 50 years. Nauru is enjoying its newfound independence, and it’s going well. Maybe too well. The island’s population of 9,000 is filthy rich due to phosphate, second only to the oil kings of Saudi Arabia in terms of per capita wealth. Nauruan residents don’t have to work too much, as their government has set up a trust fund that…