Oliver Burkeman: No one deserves treatment like this - not even the author of a Barbra Streisand biography

For most of his professional life, Norman Schacter led a relatively obscure existence as the proprietor of a Manhattan tanning salon. This week, though, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison - and put his name forward in an emphatic manner for the much-contested title of New York's Most Inexplicably Malicious Criminal of 2002.

In 1998, Schacter's wife was walking his three large dogs in Central Park when they attacked and mauled a passing author of celebrity biographies called Shaun Considine, who lives on a smart street of apartments on the Upper East Side and is the author of a book called Barbra Streisand: The Woman, The Myth, The Music. It is not, generally speaking, a good thing to do to write a book called Barbra Streisand: The Woman, The Myth, The Music, but still, Considine quite reasonably thought, it probably doesn't justify a dog-mauling in Central Park, and so he pressed charges.

At this point Mr Schacter began to exhibit a degree of criminal creativity that might have proved profitable had he ploughed it into his tanning business. He embarked on what a judge this week called - and he wasn't exaggerating - "a heartless, perpetual vendetta" that lasted for months. First, he recruited a gang of dubious individuals to plant heroin in Considine's apartment. Then, for a bit of a change, he had them plant crack. Then child pornography. Then he ordered them to lie in wait outside the apartment and beat Considine up. Considine would go to hospital and then to jail, the ingenious plan seemed to go, and would no longer press charges for the dog attack.

But as wealthier Manhattanites are always complaining - usually about nannies or cleaners, but the problem seems to extend to the criminal underworld, too - you just can't get the staff. One of the heavies had a crisis of conscience, informed the police, and then helped them stage an elaborate hoax. To trick Shacter into thinking that he had succeeded, Considine was stretchered out of his apartment, covered in blood - only it wasn't really blood. Almost anywhere else, the police would have used ketchup. But this is the Upper East Side, and Considine didn't have any ketchup, so they used cranberry juice.

The NYPD found Schacter celebrating his success. They then arrested him for crimes infinitely more serious, long-planned and bizarre than if he had just admitted to owning some aggressive dogs. Perhaps there was some criminal logic there somewhere that he could explain. Unfortunately, he is expected to be unavailable for comment for quite some time.

· The illusionist David Blaine finally climbed to the top of a 90ft pole in midtown yesterday lunchtime, but I think he may have chosen the wrong city for his widely anticipated stunt. I was standing with a group of telephone company employees on Sixth Avenue watching Blaine being hauled by a crane to the perch - which he plans to occupy for 35 hours without moving - when a portly, besuited New Yorker who was hurrying by slowed his pace to ask us what all the fuss was about.

One of the telephone people explained. "Man," replied the passer-by, without a shadow of a smile, and picked up his stride again. "I wish I had 35 hours to spend in one place."

· The rash of crimes in suburban Buffalo, reported in this column a few weeks back, appears - at long last - to be over. "Several underage youths were reportedly drinking alcohol at a Main Street tavern," notes the Police Blotter column of the Amherst Bee newspaper. Officers were dispatched, but their worries were soon dispelled. "Patrol reports no problem. Just short people."

That said, though, "A wild turkey reportedly crashed through the window of a residence on Delphi Drive." You can never be too careful.