Novelist challenges fans to plan a Heist!

Sept. 3, 2012 - PRLog -- As an interesting way to promote his new book, author E. Cooper Ostresh has launched a competition to plan the best heist. Police officers can stand easy since the heist to be planned is for a fictional building that appears in his upcoming crime thriller, “The Boxman.” The author posted the floor plans on his website with the challenge of breaking into a bank vault. http://the-boxman.com/2012/08/19/are-you-the-next-mastermind/ Contestants can describe their plan in an e-mail or in a video.

When asked how he came up with this idea he replied, “While writing the book I decided it would be more realistic if I started with a floor-plan and planned the climactic scene from there rather than creating the building around the heist. So I researched and then designed a realistic building that would hold a bank and vault. I found it was a fun challenge; almost like a puzzle. I had put in all this time creating the floor-plans and I realized it might be fun to see how other people approached the challenge.”

Mr. Ostresh says that his biggest concern was that such a contest might be misperceived. “The contest is for crime thriller and mystery enthusiasts who are looking for an intellectual challenge. I look at it as bringing to fans of heist stories the same sort of interactive challenge that mystery fans get when they put on a ‘Murder Mystery,’ party.” The contest will run until the release of the book in October.