OBSERVATIONS: Why Small Towns Make the Best Crime Stories

We’ve lived in cities. We’ve lived in small towns.

Cities teach you to be alert.

Small towns teach you to relax.

And that’s the difference.

When I write, I always picture East Texas — the pine-lined roads, the familiar trucks, the places where nothing looks rushed and everything looks known.

Small towns are built on routine.

Same gas station.

Same diner.

Same conversations recycled with different names.

People don’t feel anonymous there — and that familiarity creates a false sense of safety.

Nothing looks hidden.

That’s the trick.

In small towns, crime doesn’t announce itself. It waits. It blends into habits and reputations. It survives on phrases like “that doesn’t sound like him” or “their family’s always been good people.” 

Silence becomes social currency. Asking the wrong question makes you the problem, not the thing you’re questioning.

People don’t protect the truth in small towns.

They protect the image.

I didn’t always understand that — until I started paying attention.

Years ago, we listened to a podcast about a woman who vanished in the area where we live now.

The story wasn’t super loud. There were no dramatic twists, no neat resolution.

Just decades of unanswered questions, whispers, and the unsettling realization that sometimes answers exist — they’re just inconvenient.

Years later, pieces surfaced...

• a car

• human remains

...but clarity didn’t.

The story didn’t close.

It just got heavier.

What stayed with me wasn’t the mystery itself.

It was how many people already knew parts of it.

That’s what small towns do best.

They don’t erase harm — they distribute it quietly.

Responsibility gets diluted.

Time softens outrage.

Eventually, the goal shifts from justice to comfort. From truth to quiet.

David and I see these things differently.

David is calm. Observant. He listens longer than most people are comfortable with. His instincts don’t rush; they settle. When something feels off, he doesn’t announce it — he waits to see who fills the silence.

I’m the opposite. I notice patterns. Behavior changes. What someone says versus what they avoid. I’m drawn to motive — not just what happened, but why it was allowed to.

I ask the uncomfortable question first.

Together, we’ve learned that in small towns, the most dangerous assumption is believing familiarity equals innocence. People behave differently when they think they’re protected by reputation. Harm hides better when it wears a friendly face.

That tension is what we keep coming back to when we write about Loretta and David Smitty. Their cases aren’t about spectacle or shock value. They’re about what people choose not to see. About silence that masquerades as peace. About the cost of not wanting to know.

You don’t need chaos for a place to be unsettling.

You just need everyone to agree not to look too closely.

Small towns carry weight. Memory. History. Secrets that don’t rot — they age.

And sometimes, they get protected simply because they’ve been there too long to challenge.

That’s where the most compelling crime stories live.

Not in the noise — but in the quiet that insists it’s harmless.

Some towns don’t want justice.

They want quiet — and they’re willing to live with what that costs.

-Loretta & David

Villains Welcome.

*If you’re drawn to dark truths and the stories they leave behind, start with The Dollmaker of Point on Amazon.