In a new blog post, Lee Lofland shares some colorful inside vocabulary you can use to add character to your police procedural or detective novel. “Do your characters mumble and grumble about wanting to appear as if they know what they’re doing and saying, instead of sounding like the cliche’-spouting folks on television crime shows?” Lofland writes. “If so, you might want to toss a few of these terms into your go-to box of words.”
Here’s a few of our favorites:
- Gabaloo – a real dumbass who believes he’s heaven’s gift to everything on earth—the best singer, the sexiest, etc.
- Get Small – Hide, or run away.
- House Mouse – Officer who typically works behind a desk.
- Primer – The chemical composition that, when struck by a firing pin, ignites smokeless powder. NOT CORDITE!
- Spines – A bloodstain feature resembling rays/lines emanating out from the edge of a blood drop.
- Void – An absence of blood in an otherwise continuous bloodstain pattern.
