Crime Hits Home - S. J. Rozan (Editor and Contributor)

Crime Hits Home is a nice collection of crime related short stories exploring the most jarring type of crime imaginable, those that invade a victim’s most personal space: the home. Keep in mind that, as S. J. Rozan points out in her introduction to Crime Hits Home, “home” does not mean the same thing to everyone. Some people, Rozan says, are living in the home they want to spend the rest of their lives in, others hate where they are, and still others are desperate to return to the place they never should have left in the first place. But what all of these homes have in common is that we feel safest when we are there. So what happens when those safe spaces are violated in the worst ways imaginable?

Twenty authors, including Rozan, give their take on how that feels to the victim and what happens next. Mystery fans, of course, will recognize names like Sara Paretsky and Walter Mosley among the twenty, but some of the best stories in the book come from authors with whose work I am less familiar. 

Among my favorites are “Oyster Creek,” a story by Neil S. Plakey in which a man comes home after his mother has been killed on the roadway in a tragic hit and run accident. After what he learns about the accident and who was behind the wheel, the young man faces a decision that there is no coming back from. 

I enjoyed Ellen Hart’s “Calling Mr. Smith” because it is so easy to imagine what a movie director like Alfred Hitchcock could do with a plot like this one in which a woman mouths off in a bar one night that she would be better off without her elderly mother. Was the wrong person perhaps listening? 

Then there’s G. Miki Hayden’s story, “Forever Unconquered,” about a Seminole Indian family whose home turf in swampy Florida is invaded by drug dealers who make the mistake of hijacking the wrong man’s airboat. Let’s just say that it’s not a mistake they are going to make twice.

What is my favorite story of them all is also the shortest in the book: S. J.  Rozan’s “Playing for Keeps.” This is a deceptively simple story about a little girl who not only survived a German concentration camp but made sure that her younger brother did the same. Now, the children are living in the US where the girl is being mocked and bullied by a boy because of her accent and religion. If he only knew who he was picking on…

Bottom Line: The stories in Crime Hits Home, despite the theme common to them all, are very different from one another. They were, however, all chosen for the collection because of how clearly they address that theme: nothing is worse, and no one feels more cornered, than when a criminal dares invade a person’s home space, be that a physical home or a place you live in only in your mind. Bad things can happen to bad people when they push their intended victims too far — and in Crime Hits Home, those things do happen. 

S. J. Rozan, editor & contributor

Crime Hits Home is schedule for an April 19, 2022 publication by Harlequin Trade Publishing's Hanover Press. Review copy was provided by publisher.