Guest Post with Alison Holt

First, I'd like to thank Kati and Moujnir for having me as a guest on their wonderful blog, Jagged Edge. I love their eclectic taste in books and have enjoyed reading their reviews and interviews.

For those of you who don't know me, my name is Alison Holt and I'm a writer who just happens to have twenty years of law enforcement under my belt. Throughout the years, I've asked a lot of cops to tell me what bothers them the most about fictional officers that are portrayed either on television or within the pages of a book. I’ve managed to gather quite a list of complaints and I thought it'd be fun to entertain you today with a couple of their gripes.

One of my friends is a female sergeant with fifteen years on the job. She's one of the toughest cops I know; yet when she's off duty, heads turn when she sashays into a room in high heels and a short skirt. Honestly, she could be on the cover of a biker babe magazine. Her main complaint about fictional cops is when she reads about female officers who wear high heels and provocative clothing while they're doing anything other than walking the streets as an undercover hooker.

Well, this one’s pretty self-explanatory. You can’t run, fight, or in my case, walk, in high heels, not to mention the scuff and yuck factor of bloody crime scenes. And trying to walk through a muddy field without the heels sinking all the way down and getting stuck in the muck? Forget it.

Revealing shirts? Hah! I once had a sergeant tell me to button up the second button on my uniform shirt because he thought two undone buttons were unprofessional. And really, if you have any size up there, try running after a bad guy with a low cut bra. Talk about bruised chins... And the lewd comments the women would get from the bad guys defy description. Nope, female detectives have to dress professionally if they want to be treated like a professional, so if you read about female cops in a murder mystery dressed to the nines in heels and low cut bras, think of my friend rolling her eyes and relegating the book to the floor while she reaches for the next novel on her bedside table.

How about one of my shooting instructors who hates fictional cops who can hit a moving target, shooting from the hip, from 150 yards with a 2-inch revolver? Heck, I once saw a TV cop who pulled his gun, dove, rolled, came up shooting and shot the bad guy right between the eyes while the bad guy was holding a hostage as a shield. In reality, if a cop were stupid enough to do something like that, he'd dive, tweak his back, roll painfully, stagger to his feet, and put in a blue form in triplicate because he shot himself in the butt. And what about the opposite? Do you ever wonder about the crook who shoots at a cop from two feet away with a shotgun and misses? With a shotgun??

Throughout the years, I've thoroughly enjoyed listening to my friends complain about their fictional counterparts. I also enjoy when they poke fun at themselves, like one officer who got stuck when he vaulted over a chain link fence and his nightstick poked through the holes in the fence and hung him up...literally. All of these complaints and self-deprecating stories make for wonderful fodder for a writer who likes nothing more than to poke fun at her previous profession. The Alex Wolfe Mysteries, Credo's Hope and Credo's Legacy are chock full of funny incidents that I hope will entertain you and possibly even make you laugh out loud. Enjoy and Bonne lecture!

Bio: Meet Lt. Alison Holt, a cop for more than twenty years. She has arrested
everything from homicide suspects to emus, the latter earning her a spot on
America's Funniest Home Videos. She taught police procedures to officers,
and now in addition to writing books, she teaches writers how to write
realistic police scenes and characters. For more information, you can visit
her at www.Alisonholtbooks.com.