One of the best recent additions to a growing number of microhistories of crime in colonial Latin America, Nicole von Germeten's Death in Old Mexico stands out for its page-turning narrative flow, the extensive research behind it, and the evocative sense of Mexico City that readers will discover within its pages. It tells the story of one of the most shocking crimes in eighteenth-century Mexico, the brutal 1789 killings of don Joaquín Dongo and ten others in his household as well as the gruesome and graphic exemplary punishments meted out to his murderers. In Germeten's account, the mass killing reinforced a viceroy's efforts to bolster the policing of Mexico City, through patrols and lighting especially, the topic of Germeten's 2022 book, The Enlightened Patrolman: Early Law Enforcement in Mexico City. The publication of three excellent works on crime and the law in Latin America—The Enlightened Patrolman, Profit...
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