Whodunnit? Youdunnit!

Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.

Police were stumped until they read the gruesome thriller of a Polish pulp fiction writer who orchestrated the murder of a suspected love rival.

The writer was sentenced to 25 years behind bars for his role in a grisly case of abduction, torture and murder. Then he used the crime for the plot of a bestselling thriller.

In a remarkable case that has gripped Poland for months, Krystian Bala, a writer of blood-curdling fiction, was found guilty of orchestrating the murder seven years ago of a Wroclaw businessman, Dariusz Janiszewski, in a crime of passion brought on by the suspicion that the victim was sleeping with his ex-wife.

The court ruled Bala planned and directed the killing of Janiszewski, but ruled there was insufficient evidence to convict him of murder. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison.