The most ridiculous place for a murder of the week

[xizor]

While Washington DC does have a large share of murders, I add NCIS to this discussion because all of their weekly murders are navy personnel. I bet sailors and marines in that universe dread getting a DC area assignment.

[FairyChatMom]

Yeah - I did a 30-month tour of duty in the Pentagon and survived! Then again, the organization didn’t become NCIS till 1992, and I was there 80-82… Guess I dodged the bullets.

[DesertDog]

Longmire. Absaroka county’s entire police force (off the reservation) is a sheriff and three, no make that two, deputies. That means the populations has to be 5,000 tops, probably less and there’s a body found almost every week. And when they skip a week, they make up for it by finding two the next week.

[Loach]

@DesertDog

Longmire. Absaroka county’s entire police force (off the reservation) is a sheriff and three, no make that two, deputies. That means the populations has to be 5,000 tops, probably less and there’s a body found almost every week. And when they skip a week, they make up for it by finding two the next week.

I mentioned that in the OP. That was the reason for making this thread. I just started watching Longmire on Netflix. The first few episodes of season one already had Mexican Drug Cartels, the Boston Mafia, and a bear used as a weapon. The bear I can see but the rest must be pretty rare in rural Wyoming.

[Dendarii_Dame]

Balaclava County, Maine, in Charlotte MacLeod’s Peter Shandy mysteries.

[bmoak]

Santa Barbara, CA seems to rack up a lot of murders over the course of Psych.

[Bryan_Ekers]

Murder on the Orient Express… the Series

[kaylasdad99]

@kunilou

Dodge City, Kansas only had about 1,200 people at the time Gunsmoke took place, pardner, but Marshall Matt Dillon himself killed 145 people. Granted, the marshall was shot 59 times, so he had some justification. But think about the implications of the local law enforcement killing more than 10% of the population.

And since everyone of those 145 desperados got what was coming to them, one can only imagine the carnage they inflicted!

So – rather than Dodge City having a Boot Hill, Boot Hill had a Dodge City?

[RivkahChaya]

@Little_Nemo

Hawaii Five-O is pretty unrealistic. It treats Honolulu like it’s a major metropolis like Los Angeles or New York and has a commensurate crime rate. But Honolulu is a small city; it has less people than Witchita, Kansas. And its crime rate is low.

[trivia hijack]My grandfather had the crime beat for the Wichita Eagle for almost 50 years-- he was the primary reporter, then the chief editor-- and retired just before BTK came on the scene. One of the reasons that BTK didn’t get as much ink as he’d hoped is that there wasn’t anyone really in charge yet after my grandfather had left (he left kind of abruptly due to illness). They had new reporters covering in sort of patchwork, and another editor working crime on the side. They actually brought my grandfather in to consult a little-- I’ve no idea what he said. If BTK had gotten started 5 years earlier, he would have been under a veteran editor who had covered crime during the Depression.[/hijack]

[TheInimitableMaven]

@MrAtoz

Recently my wife and I have been binge-watching Midsomer Murders, set in the fictional English county of Midsomer (actually filmed in various towns and villages throughout Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire). Over 110 episodes, since 1997, those poor cops have been dealing with grisly and grotesque murders in the midst of village fetes, bird-watching societies, and open-air art classes on the village green. And on market day, too!

It’s tough out there on the mean streets of rural England.

@ThelmaLou

Miss Marple used to say that those picturesque little English villages hid some dark and dirty secrets.

@Miss_Mapp

I’ve been watching Midsomer Murders lately too, and between that and some of Agatha Christie’s mysteries, I am convinced that a village fete is the most dangerous place one can be. Absolute death traps!

No quaint British death trap list is complete without the Cotswolds on Father Brown.

[TCMF-2L]

In the Jesse Stone TV movie Sea Change (starring Tom Selleck) the alcoholic police chief is advised to keep busy to stave off his cravings for alcohol.

But in defiance of TV stereotypes the small coastal town of Paradise simply lacks enough murders forcing Stone to look into a cold case so he can keep himself occupied.

However by the end of the film ‘normal service’ is resumed when Stone is attacked by, and kills in self defence, an enforcer from criminal gang.

TCMF-2L

[Jim_s_Son]

@kunilou

Dodge City, Kansas only had about 1,200 people at the time Gunsmoke took place, pardner, but Marshall Matt Dillon himself killed 145 people. Granted, the marshall was shot 59 times, so he had some justification. But think about the implications of the local law enforcement killing more than 10% of the population.

And since everyone of those 145 desperados got what was coming to them, one can only imagine the carnage they inflicted!

I once visited Tombstone, AZ. The reason for its existence was a gold mine. The tour guide pointed out ledges where outlooks armed with rifles sat to make sure the workers didn’t steal any gold. He said his research indicated some 50 workers were shot by outlooks.

But from what I remember from the “People’s AlmanacS” books the Wallace family did in the 1970s, the number of people killed by the famous lawmen of the West was pretty low.

[Maus_Magill]

I’d always wanted to visit the Caribbean, but the small, quaint island of Saint Marie is definitely off my destination short list.

[Buck_Godot]

@Roderick_Femm

Very bad adaptation of some excellent books by Tony Hillerman. Bear in mind that the actual square miles covered by these police officers is huge, and (if I remember the books correctly) there weren’t that many bodies per book. The series spans something like 35 years, so one approximately every 2 years, and the original main detective is now mostly retired; the books are being continued after Hillerman’s death under the auspices of his daughter.

I can’t find the reference but I remember that there was a mystery book that was authored collaborative with a large number of authors each writing one chapter. When it was Hillerman’s turn he kludged together a way to suddenly move the action to New Mexico, and the next several authors had to work out a way to get the hero back.

[Son_of_a_Rich]

@Jim_s_Son

I once visited Tombstone, AZ. The reason for its existence was a gold mine. The tour guide pointed out ledges where outlooks armed with rifles sat to make sure the workers didn’t steal any gold. He said his research indicated some 50 workers were shot by outlooks.

Slight highjack (sorry).
How would that have worked? The workers who were shot were carrying out nuggets that were too big to fit in their pockets? And anyway, doesn’t most mining operations involve removal of gold-carrying ore which is indistinguishable from plain rock until it’s processed?

[TBG]

So many people have been murdered or otherwise died under abnormal circumstances at Seattle Grace/Mercy West/Gray Sloane hospital that it’s got to out do many cities. Even Chicago’s County General can’t come close, and they had a helicopter fall on a guy who’d previously been maimed by another helicopter!

[DesertDog]

@Loach

I mentioned that in the OP. That was the reason for making this thread. I just started watching Longmire on Netflix. The first few episodes of season one already had Mexican Drug Cartels, the Boston Mafia, and a bear used as a weapon. The bear I can see but the rest must be pretty rare in rural Wyoming.

Erm, I missed that in the last sentence of the OP. I just finished the 4th season and it isn’t any safer.

[Jim_s_Son]

@Son_of_a_Rich

Slight highjack (sorry).
How would that have worked? The workers who were shot were carrying out nuggets that were too big to fit in their pockets? And anyway, doesn’t most mining operations involve removal of gold-carrying ore which is indistinguishable from plain rock until it’s processed?

That was 30 years ago so Idon’t really remember. It may have been just putting it in their pockets. It may be the mine operator was powerful enough to get the law to overlook heavy handed justice.

Things used to be a lot different in the olden days. 100 years ago famous defense attorneys such as a Clarence Darrow and Earl Rogers would bribe jurors or compromise them, claiming that since the rich did it, why shouldn’t they

[Morgyn]

@Annie-Xmas

I love Leslie Meier’s Lucy Stone mysteries series, but Tinker’s Cove, Maine must be second only to Cabot Cove in Maine’s murder rate.

ETA: Word Up: Never stay in a Maine town whose name ends in “Cove”.

Not even Crabapple Cove?

[Rick_Kitchen]

Which brings us to Sunnydale, CA, which is another delightful town that had a surprising number of deaths, primarily among the high school residents. Not exactly sure how they ever filled out their graduating classes.

Well, it *is *set over a Hellmouth.

The little town of Lake Eden, Minnesota, the site of Joanne Fluke’s (currently) 22 novels has a high murder rate, frequently more than one per book.