I need to learn what?

well, the first one (bandit) is easy - he is holed up in a cave with his six-gun blazing away

Ah, I like that! Suggestions on a mnemonic to remember fei3 vs zui4?

罪 is a forbidden act (非) under a pair of eyes that are looking at the deed askance, thereby instilling guilt in the criminal. (I know those are altered nets instead of eyes but I like how "eyes" work as a mnemonic better).

How about these as pronunciation mnemonics:

"The 'six-shooter' bandit was beginning to look a bit fey from all the stooping down (and back up again) in his cramped cave".

"Nobody's swayed the verdict the watchful judge's handed down (to our now captured six-shooter bandit): guilty."

(Key: Bold = the concept in question. Underline = as close an approximation of the Pinyin syllable as possible. Italics = tone).

Each copy of that dictionary I'm writing will now come with a big bag of really good ganja attached.

flynnfrogg and David Wong, thanks, I think I'm good now.

Gharial, A for effort, but I'm not sure that's going to work for me...... Actually, I think I'm good for pronunciation if I can remember "罪有应得" -- somehow I can remember the pronunciation of that.

No problemo, JB - I'm not sure that sort of thing always quite works for me either (it's one reason why I'm in two minds still about that Tuttle book by the Matthews hubby-and-wife team, for learning 800 or so characters) - seems a bit too involved, quite a lot of effort, don't it, compared to potentially just picking an item up in a phrase or two (like that 罪有应得, or 罪责难逃 etc). That being said, I think more books should have some sort of system for helping with especially the suprasegmentals (i.e. tones) of Chinese, as these aren't ever that easy to really commit to memory, and even if some examples don't quite work for some learners, they should then hopefully be more able to invent their own examples or indeed system (or not!).