From the master of Filipino crime fiction, a genre-bending collection that documents murders, disappearances, and acts of violence in stories that range from procedural crime to horror to near-future noir F.H. Batacan's first novel, Smaller and Smaller Circles , was an instant classic when it was published in 1999, a masterpiece of Filipino crime fiction that won the Philippine National Book Award. In this extraordinary and far-ranging story collection, she explores the darkest corners of human experience, depicting with pitch-black humor the systems of class and politics that her characters are trapped in and the moments of violence--accidental or otherwise--that can, at any moment, shatter their lives. In particular, Batacan shines an unsparing light on the epidemic of violence against women in the Philippines. When a wealthy politician's twelve-year-old son disappears, the family's driver witnesses the aftermath. A field investigator for the World Health Organization travels the globe giving presentations about a biomedical enzyme that will lead to the extinction of the human race. And Father Augusto Saenz, the Jesuit priest and forensic anthropologist from Smaller and Smaller Circles , returns to investigate the murder of a woman whose secretive life holds the key to her death.

Sure to confirm Batacan's status as a crime writer of global status, Accidents Happen is a relentless exploration of worlds where the smallest moments are infused with life and vibrating with menace, and death is always close at hand.