Murder, He Wrote: Novelist Faces Prison

A Polish author is on trial for allegedly committing the murder upon which he based his best-selling novel. A jury is currently deliberating the case of Krystian Bala, whose grisly novel Amok fictionalized a famous unsolved murder, the Times of London reports. Prosecutors maintain that the book contains details that only the victim's killer could know.

Bala's book concerns the death of a Polish businessman found mutilated in a river in 2000, a crime for which the police had no suspects. Yet after the publication of the novel police arrested the author, who has claimed he was hooded and beaten while in custody. The trial, now adjourned, has revolved almost entirely around circumstantial evidence. (More murder stories.)