Hi everyone, I'm working on a story centered around a small town smack-dab in the middle of North America, run by a large mafia family. I'm purposely vague about the location(s) and I'm still not sure whether it should be set Canada or the United States (which would be easier to hide a town in? Or does it matter if I don't specify which country?). This is set in the near future (the year will be unspecified as well) and focuses on a new semi-global law that was passed. The mafia works as a black market and the whole town is in on it, more than willing to band together to cover up the shady stuff when outside law enforcement comes around to make sure things are up to code. The town isn't in the direct spotlight when it comes to law enforcement, but is acknowledged as a "iffy" spot. Does this reek of clichés? Can I make a community like this seem plausible even in the age of social media and drones? What would be the biggest plotholes I should address? Any comments or suggestions are more than welcome! PS Ah, hell, just realized this belongs in "plot development", not "research"...sorry!
Why does the town need to be hidden? And does it need to be a town or could it be a private complex like cults and large companies sometimes have? Like where they only sell houses to people who are in on the plot.
Hidden in plain sight probably would be the most realistic option. I mean, there's always underground, but..
There are a number of private compounds spread through the semi-arid west; they can look like small towns. Central Nevada is lonesome. Problem is getting a sufficient water supply. Could maybe hide one in some of the dense forests/swamplands of the Southeast or Southcentral states, but sooner or later, a guy with a bunch of coonhounds is gonna come along and find it.
Good question, I had to think that one over for a while. Maybe this will help clarify things: the new law bans all consumption of meat as well as animal slaughter. The mafia is essentially the town's butchers who only pretended to shut down business. This isn't an evil organization by any means, it's a large family-oriented community that is trying to hide from a society that's on the brink of becoming completely totalitarian. Visitors are a huge threat and could have everything blow up in their faces, and rather than openly fight and put their families in danger, they're trying to hold onto their way of life and disappear. I appreciate the questions, I need something to get my brain working!
I really appreciate all of the comments, they've been incredibly helpful already in just making me look at the important obvious questions that I missed while chasing the obscure ones.
Perhaps you should study insurgency and resistance. Europe during WWII might be a place to start; the Dutch resistance was especially effective. They actually ran communication wire through Nazi encampments, merging it with barbed wire, etc., hiding it in plain sight. I have a character in my current WIP who is hiding her abilities and her resistance to the Dynasty by playing stupid. She works in an important Dynasty facility, but is trusted because she behaves like the automaton they want her to be. An intelligence officer masquerades as a street bum. The resistance does nothing except collect intelligence for their contacts with the Republic. A lot of how they hide will depend upon your world build, especially the technology available to both sides. If Big Bad has the tech and the resistance does not, they will have to get exotic to hide. If the resistance has access to the same devices it becomes a tech war.
Ooh, I'll definitely have to look into that! At the moment, the "bad guys" have modern tech like we do, while the "good guys" have stuff that would be comparable to a couple decades ago (the community is a bit on the Luddite side). What I'm going for at the moment is that they hide behind the family. Men are blue collar workers, most women are housewives, kids are normal-ish, but they all work behind the scenes as an extremely connected unit. Just your average, completely unremarkable nuclear American family with nothing to hide, no sir...
Why does the entire town have to be in on it? There are tons of towns like this in the US, but not LITERALLY everyone is in on whatever the shady practice is. Every town small town has that one loser whose a cops son or judges son, who everybody knows is making and selling meth, but everyone looks the other way. Large cartels can also just pay off local officials, there are tons of towns in Mexico where cartels simply throw money at the locals: good will and safe passage is valuable. If you want to literally hide a town, can you put it underground? With enough money, underground habitats can get fairly extensive.
In the middle of a nature reserve with perimeter fencing and flyover restrictions (thank you M. Night Shymalan)
If you want a model for a cartel-owned town I would look into the coal mining towns of the 19th and 20th centuries. The coal companies paid their employees, often cheap immigrant labor, in "coal script" which had no actual monetary value, unless spent on items in the company owned store, or to pay rent on the company owned houses, etc.. The law enforcement, local newspaper and all social programs were owned by the company so the workers, many of whom did not speak English well had their lives and access to information tightly controlled by the monopoly. I remember reading accounts of families who lost their husband/father in the mines and thus not having money to pay rent being put out of their house in the middle of winter and freezing to death unless they could find friends or family who would take them in. The practice of paying in non-monetary script continued until 1938 until it was outlawed but continued in Kentucky and West Virginia until congress expressly ended the practice in 1967. It would not be too had to imagine a small town being taken over by a cartel who come in and buy out or squeeze out the locals and set up some sort of monopoly system like above where they pay the locals in their own "money" or even real money but own everything everyone touches from the cradle to the grave. I imagine a place like that would develop a bad reputation...especially if they fleeced visitors or the law enforcement hassled passers-through. There are quite a few little towns who do things like randomly drop the speed limit from 55mph to 20mph around a bend in the road or partially hidden speed signs just to charge the unwary ridiculous fines
Re: hiding a town underground: you might be interested in The Tunnels of Cu Chi: A Harrowing Account of America's Tunnel Rats in the Underground Battlefields of Vietnam by Tom Mangold.
Now I'm torn between, clearly I was overthinking this whole aspect of the story, and, bring on the shyster tunnel rats!! This is all extremely helpful, thank you guys!
