Crime fiction is big business at the moment, but there are certain situations that have been overplayed so much that they have become genre cliches and everybody knows what to expect next. Here are ten cliches you should try to avoid and thoughts on how to subvert the cliches if you do decide to use them.

Cops and Doctors

You can find this perennial favourite in both crime and historical fiction. You'll see it in ER, NYPD Blue and in cross -genre shows like the X Files. The doctor says "OK but only for a minute" or "It's touch and go. The next few hours will be crucial" or "It could be minutes, it could be days... you never know with coma cases" The policemen usually say nothing. They just stand around and chew the scenery in frustration.

Mulder and Scully actually spend a lot of their time hanging around in hospitals but you don't notice so much because the patients aren't your run of the mill criminals or witnesses.

And that's the way to get around this one. Get a new twist and add some tension. Maybe the patient is related to either the cop or the doctor. Or maybe the doctor is an amateur detective and knows better than the cop? But beware of the "Dick Van Dyke" syndrome... that leads you into a whole new area of cliche

The New Partner

In this scenario a veteran cop has to get a new partner after the death of his old one. The rookie is either keen as mustard and eager to please, or burned out from personal problems. It's probably best known in modern times from the Lethal Weapon movies. Screenwriters tried to add some tension early in the series by having Mel Gibson as a borderline suicide case, and that gave the first film an edge; but it was lost in later instalments. By the time the fourth movie came came along they had fallen so deeply into a buddy movie relationship that all drama was lost in favour of light comedy.

You need to do some serious subverting if you want to use this situation. People have tried having a dog as the buddy in K9, having their Mom as the buddy in Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot, and having foreigners as the buddy in big Arnie's Red Heat.

Outside the strictly police procedural we've also had the robot buddy in Robocop, the ghost buddy in Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), the alien buddy in Alien Nation, the magician buddy in Jonathan Creek, the ex-serviceman buddy in both Sherlock Holmes and Poirot. The list just goes on and on.

However you do it, filling in the blanks is easy in this scenario. What you need is something new. How about having the cop being given a politician doing a meet-the-people stint. Or, on a completely tasteless but might be funny level, how about the schizophrenic cop who is his own buddy?

The Rookie in the Morgue

Once only the province of young students in Quincy, this one now turns up on TV in the CSI franchise or Crossing Jordan and in print in the Kay Scarpetta books. There are usually two ways this one can proceed. Either the young cop rushes out, hand at mouth, or he stands still, icily cold and detached, as the autopsy proceeds.

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