There are no safe places these days. Crime lurks behind every apartment building and every barn. Murders are committed in neighbouring apartments, outside church doors, in shisha bars or in potato fields. From a spatial perspective, lawbreaking has emancipated itself – so to speak. This can also be observed in the literary universe of crime novels. Since the 1980s large cities, which have always been regarded as hotbeds of evil, have had strong competition from the criminal province, outstripping the metropolises as sin spaces par excellence. However, the province no longer implies security and isolation from the brutal outside world. The province stands for bloodshed and acts of violence, which are narratively negotiated in local crime novels. The aim of this volume is to get to the heart of these literary modes of crime from a narrative perspective.