Help! A Cop Dropped Into My Story!

Last weekend as part of the local Sisters in Crime writers' group, I co-taught a workshop at the Civic Center Library. The woman in charge teamed me up with a, gasp, cop. We did a workshop on how someone like me - Gilmore Girlish, teacher, mother, have another brownie - type person can possible write dark suspense. My partner, Isabella Maldonado, was a twenty year veteran of a special task force: think Angelina Jolie in Lora Croft. She - all Angelina Jolie professional, cop, mother - wants to soften the reality, be more creative. I definitely came out the winner of the tagteam because I learned so much from Bella.


One of the more interesting things she did was take my first suspense Pursuit of Justice and look at what I did well and what I didn't quite manage to get right. I'm going to post some of the examples. Look below.

1. Rosa should never have purchased this car. Statistics showed that red
cars were pulled over for speeding more often than any other color...

2. The afternoon sun bounced off his mirrored glasses, giving him a
peculiar insect sort of look.

3. He grabbed the radio from his belt and called a Code One
Thousand.

4. He flinched as a gun's report rendered him momentarily deaf.

5. He had her on the ground in two seconds flat and finished giving the
Miranda to the back of her head.

Three are misses; two are hits. Can you guess the misses and why?

Go ahead, comment. I'll tell you how you did this evening.