Alissa Grosso pays homage to the Pennsylvania and New Jersey towns that shaped not only her life, but her fiction! Learn all about them in this special post, and check out Alissa’s latest story, “Mysterious Ways,” in our July/August issue, on sale now!
I’ve lived in a variety of towns over the years, mainly in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Most of those towns have been small towns, and like happy families they are all alike. Every small town I have lived in has been full to bursting with quirky characters. Perhaps that’s why small towns make some of the best settings for mystery stories.
About a decade or so ago I found myself living in a small town in Pennsylvania whose residents were as quirky as they come. I remember trying to explain to my boyfriend who doesn’t watch nearly as many British mystery shows as I do that it was like living in an episode of Midsomer Murders, minus all the murder. One of the more colorful characters was an elderly woman who pedaled around town on an adult-sized tricycle stealing anything that wasn’t nailed down from people’s yards and porches. Then one evening in a surreal instance of art imitating life I was watching an episode of Midsomer Murders where an elderly woman rode around on a tricycle and stole stuff. I felt vindicated in my assessment of my strange little town. It almost made up for the fact that my elderly neighbor had pinched that stained glass plant stake from my window box.
Barley, Pennsylvania, where my short story “Mysterious Ways” (in the July/August 2026 issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine) takes place doesn’t exist. Like the town of Culver Creek, Pennsylvania where I set a series of thrillers it’s a sort of amalgamation of the different small towns I’ve called home over the years—places that are full of history, local lore and small town gossip. I remember one of the small towns I lived in had a folksy sign displayed on the counter of the Post Office that read, “The nice thing about a small town is even if you don’t know what you’re doing someone else does.” Proving that adage true one morning I was out walking my dog, and was surprised to learn that I was moving. I guess it serves me right for putting a cardboard box in my car one day, thus firing up the rumor mill.
Barley, like Cabot Cove or Badger’s Drift or any of the hundreds of fictional small towns with surprisingly high body counts that have come before it, is the perfect setting for a little bit of murder, where everyone knows (or thinks they know) entirely too much about their neighbors, where everyone is just a little bit strange. I say this as a small town resident, who definitely is a bit quirky, herself. So, for the foreseeable future I’ll be calling a small town home, and setting my mysteries in these cozy but offbeat spots.
Trace Evidence 