SMALL TOWN & MURDERED

by Alice Goody

Small towns are susceptible to mystery thriller writers as good fishing ponds for blood splatters, treachery, and an axe in the back are for fishes. Sure, murder can occur in the cities; in the smoky streets, the tight-knit apartments with floorboards and walls as thin as your cheap paper.

But there is something with the isolating feeling of a murder in a small town, where everyone knows everybody, and the suspect pool of people are more ordinary— complex yes, as most humans are, but ordinary nevertheless.

Except for the town recluse who will be suspect number one whether he did it or not.

Of course, he didn't do it. Someone's undeniably precious person of the community did. He'll just be bait because he is, what you call, 'easy prey'. The easy fix.

This is what happened in Phryne Touk. A small, speck of a town close to the middle of nowhere and has every aspect of a thriller small town with an even hilarious population of 1,021.

People are scarce. People all know each other. People witnessed a murder occur.

Although it isn't much of a witnessing when you only see the aftermath, but on Tuesday morning, after a forest ranger based in the west side of Major Hill- a good shred of preserved forestry north west of the town, came out of his home duty after six months living in isolation on top of a 100 squared, 15 feet property with nothing but a radio transmission to his colleagues as a form of human interaction, stumble upon the gruesome remains of an unknown woman.

Though 'remains' leave an even kinder effort to sugarcoat the state of what was left of a reportedly Caucasian woman in her mid thirties, as half of her insides were out and gone.

Of course in a forest shoved with the wilderness, we can expect to some degree that a hungry bear or wolf would want a piece of her, and an unidentified animal did took his pick, but there wasn't much left when there were clinical evidence of a precise surgical removal of some of her tender insides.

So what is this?

Local police, the kind you frequent in such books, surprisingly has an ace up their sleeves. Or aces if you consider an entire family of well known investigators.

The Finches.

That's right folks. Related to the infamous Los Angeles private detective, G.H. Finch and the champ proudly called 'Winner of the Unwinnable', Margaux Finch, a top shark at New York's finest law firms.

A relation of the infamous Finch family apparently has been reported to live in Phryne Touk.

The investigation of the local police, the local Finch, and the state police are now on this case. And if it turns into a serial case... well, folks, you know you'll be the first to know in this blog, where even the smallest towns as long as it has the freaky and disturbing attributions to a murder gone bad... We will know.

But for now, we mourn the death of a woman, still unknown, in the west forest of Major Hill, Phryne Touk, Manitoba.

No one heard her screams. Phryne Touk may have a small population versus the land mass mostly unknown to even its residents because of its greenery infestation, but one of those one thousand and twenty one people killed this unknown woman. Or maybe we do have a city folk who drove up to the farthest place he could think of to tear her inside out and let her screams go free.

Personally, I still think of my hometown everybody-knows-everybody theory.

But don't worry mystery lovers. We're on the case, waiting for the next step.

As we always say to those psychopaths-

Your move,

W.

Yes, this is set in Canada. Surprise!

For any lovely Canadian readers, if you have any fun facts you'd like to share, please do. I always love a good fun fact :-) And It would certainly help in further decorating the story for your immersion.

I've made this italicised so you can separate it from the actual chapters/dialogue bits, but if it hurts your eyes, please do tell me. I know some people find it annoying.