From searches for serial killers and missing persons to the persecution of migrants and Aboriginal people, David Price takes us back to a time when the line between lawmakers and criminals was lightly drawn. Based on a wide array of contemporaneous accounts of life in the Gascoyne, these sometimes shocking, sometimes disturbing true crime stories depict an era when laws served to maintain order rather than to secure justice. Dark Tales from the Long River offers a window into an evolving history of colonisation that is still struggling into the light.