I’m going to be completely honest with you. I can’t think of many things I hate more than detectives, what with their stupid hats, magnifying glasses and detective know-how. It’s the detective know-how that I especially dislike, and the pompous attitude that goes with it. Detectives believe that any event can be reconstructed with keen observation and logical deduction. Well, guess what, Hercule Poirot, sometimes you just have to be there. Nobody likes a know-it-all, and even less people like a think-they-know-it-all-but-don’t-really, and this is why most detectives have few, if any, friends. An example of someone who is no friend of detectives is me, and good evidence of this fact is that I have created this…

Confess: The easiest way to foil a detective is to commit a crime and then confess to doing it before the detective figures it out. Also, make it a really bizarre crime with lots of quirky evidence so the detective is extra disappointed when he doesn’t get to investigate.

The Toilet Seat Trick: Firstly, be a woman living in a house with only women. Then, leave the toilet seat up and invite a detective over to your house. He will look around and say “The toilet seat is up. A man has been here.” Then you say “No, I just put it up to foil you!”

The Pair of Footprints Leading Nowhere Trick: Walk somewhere, and then, at some point, do a sidestep and walk backwards to where you started. If you perform this move correctly, you will get two pairs of footprints that lead nowhere. All the detectives with their stupid magnifying glasses looking at footprints will be totally confused. Also, hey stupid, you don’t need a magnifying glass to look at footprints. Bonus points for using this maneuver at the edge of a cliff.

Be a terrible criminal: Leave lots of evidence, have an obvious motive and don’t establish an alibi. No one is going to call the detective when it is totally clear how the crime was committed and who did it. If enough of this happens, all the detectives will be unemployed and will have to get real jobs.

Commit the perfect crime: This is in many senses the opposite of the previous option, and is considerably more difficult. Basically, what you have to do is devise and execute a plot so ingenious that no one, even a detective, could figure out what you did. Chances are, you aren’t enough of a criminal mastermind to plan the perfect murder or the perfect heist, but you probably have what it takes to plan the perfect jaywalk, or maybe even the perfect illegal mp3 download. Make sure, though, that you don’t commit the almost perfect crime instead by accident, because that is exactly the kind of thing on which detectives thrive. Detectives are the bottom-feeders that grow on the almost perfect crimes committed by the pus that infects the mucus that cruds up the fungus that feeds on pond scum. Don’t be pus.

Choose your cover-up murder target wisely: Often times, to conceal a crime, you have to commit a murder or two to silence people who know too much. You know who always, invariably, knows too much? The detective. I am not condoning violence towards anyone, but seriously, he should be at the top of your “To Whack” list.

You might have noticed that my statement in the introduction to this guide, “Nobody likes a know-it-all, and even less people like a think-they-know-it-all-but-don’t-really” doesn’t really make much sense. Assuming that the concept of negative people is ridiculous, it is logically impossible for a group to contain less people than a group containing nobody. Detectives love logic, and every opportunity to create logical contradictions should be taken. That way, when a detective says “There has to be a logical explanation,” you can foil them and their logic with a hoard of counterexamples.

You might have also noticed that I referenced My Best Friend’s Wedding for what appeared to be no good reason. I don’t even like that movie and, to be honest with you, I haven’t seen it in its entirety. Acting without good reason is the number one cause of detective foiling in the United States today, and you should do well to engage in it.

I'll send you back to the essence.