Editor: Mitzi Szereto

Lovers of true crime tales will be bound to revel in these brand-new stories of crime perpetrated across the globe, as played out against the backdrop of small towns. Think your town is immune from cannibals and spree murderers? Think again! No place is too small for such fiends to hang out and no area is so quiet that it cannot be ripped apart by bloody undercurrents of malign menace. Mitzi Szereto, whose previous books include Florida Gothic and Getting Even: Revenge Stories, has once more done herself (and the contributors to this volume) proud by assembling stories of madness and mayhem from towns in the world as far apart as Port Arthur in Tasmania and Abertillery in Wales. The Best New True Crime Stories: Small Towns is the second in the series, with the first, brought out in 2019, having focused on serial killers, which previous anthology has met with much acclaim from members of the true crime writers’ fraternity.

Authored by both men and women of international crime-writing repute, The Best New True Crime Stories: Small Towns contains fifteen tales that contextualize the crime that is about to occur, within the broader community and then within the ambit of the milieu of the perpetrator(s) themselves, providing background history and explaining the reasons for, and motivations behind, the crimes that are described in detail as they transpired. The aftermath of each crime is also given some attention, with its effect not only on the local community, but on the region or nation as a whole, in many instances. Focusing on the more violent crimes of murder and (sexual) assault and battery, the collection might not, at times, be an easy read, but it certainly is an enlightening and engrossing one, from so many different perspectives.

The tale that I found most poignant (“Crime Has Come to Penal!” by Iris Leona Marie Cross) was that of two young children who survived alone for four days amidst the rotting corpses of their parents and an uncle, whose throats had been cut, presumably for not complying with the demands made by a protection racket. Say the word “Caribbean,” and a vision of palm-lined beaches with beautiful beaches and sunlit water tends to come to mind. Surprisingly enough, such idyllic surrounds are defied by the ongoing crime wave that has come to run rampant through the island state of Trinidad and Tobago, of which the above is just one instance. The matter-of-fact description of how the murders most probably took place does nothing to allay the horrifying images that such a narrative inevitably calls up in the reader’s mind.

Gripping and engrossing The Best New True Crime Stories: Small Towns certainly is, and very much worth the read. Just don’t blame me if your dreams are disturbed for nights afterwards, though—mine certainly were!