On Writing CLEAN SLATE by Brianna Labuskes

Following the massive success of the Dr. Gretchen White and Raisa Susanto series, USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestselling author Brianna Labuskes returns with her most chilling investigation yet.

CLEAN SLATE is the first installment in the Olive Hunt series and introduces readers to a gritty new protagonist, a crime scene cleaner who finds herself drawn into a deadly hunt for a serial killer.

Olive’s search for the truth takes her deep into the heart of her Atlanta community and exposes the chilling reality of two different justice systems: one for the wealthy and one for everyone else.

Crime scene cleaners come into people’s lives on their very worst day and try to help them. At least that was how Amy Adams’s character described the job in Sunshine Cleaners, a movie that piqued the public’s interest about a job that tends to fly under the radar until you, unfortunately, need them. 

For many real-life crime scene cleaners, though, that’s a romanticized view of their jobs, which, to them, is no more or less romantic than any other position in the cleaning industry. They just have higher biohazard stakes involved, they say.  

It was important to me that there is that distinction. Most fiction about crime scene cleaners—rightly, and often times powerfully—capitalizes on these characters’ unique situation. They are encountering people who are freshly grappling with a trauma of some sort, and in terms of emotional fodder for story-telling, that can be a profound way to explore themes about grief, love, anger and fear.  

But with Clean Slate, my new book starring Olive Hunt, a crime scene cleaner who was raised by a mother with contamination OCD, I wanted the rose-colored glasses firmly put away in a drawer. 

Olive doesn’t want to know anything about her clients, and has no interest in playing either psychologist or detective. She already has a job that keeps her incredibly busy. She’s a one-woman operation constantly trying to keep up with much slicker, well-established competition.

The thoroughness she learned from her mother and the dignified respectful way she handles the dead, have earned her a commendable reputation in Atlanta, but that’s only because she doesn’t get distracted trying to read the blood spatter or hypothesize about the height of the murderer. 

That is until she uncovers a clue the police missed. It’s not just any clue, either, it’s one that links a homicide to the community center that practically raised her. Before she knows it, she’s dragged into a hunt for a serial killer that, ultimately, ignites a fire in her for finding justice for forgotten victims. 

I loved the idea of doing a fresh take on a procedural from a viewpoint that readers don’t know much about. The only problem: I didn’t know much about crime scene cleaning, either. 

But, research is a writer’s best friend. 

There were two fronts I knew I needed to tackle: physical and emotional. 

The first led me to places not everyone would want to go. In Mop Men: Inside the World of Crime Scene Cleaners, by Alan Emmins, the author follows the day-to-day life of Neal Smithers, a real-life crime scene cleaner in California whose slogan is “praying for death.” Emmins takes the reader into the room where skull fragments are embedded into headboards, blood is leaking through a saturated mattress, and there’s more insects than you thought you’d ever be able to imagine. 

In addition to the book, which offer so many fascinating real-life examples of what a crime scene cleaner might have to deal with, there’s a three-episode docu-series on Amazon that follows Smithers—clearly a large personality in the industry. From both, a picture emerges of a 24/7 operation that’s constantly in demand.

There are streets and sidewalks to scrub of blood after gang-related shootings; decomposing bodies from a natural death that hadn’t been discovered for too many days; and suicides by shotgun that result in a whole room having to be gutted. The furniture burned, the floor torn up, the works. There were even lower-stakes jobs, like when they get called out to sanitize a police car after a weekend where picking up drunk-tank candidates results in the exact situation you’d expect. 

Once I got a picture of the types of jobs they were hired to do, I needed to figure out the how. I’m not ashamed to say that my expertise stops at Clorox wipes and all-purpose spray. Maybe a little bleach and hot water. 

Lucky for me there is a wealth of knowledge out there. Crime scene cleaners captivate the public’s attention to the point that there’s profiles on them at least a few times a year. But they also chime in on Reddit threats and other crowd-sourced forums. 

From there, I learned things like brain matter hardens like cement when it is flung against a wall. Once it’s dry you can chip away at it with a putty knife or soften it with a special chemical spray. And don’t listen to the Old Wives Tales: the easiest way to kill maggots are by dousing them with boiling hot water. You have blood stains that go beyond a scraped knee at a softball game? There’s an enzyme solution that breaks down the proteins and makes them water-soluble.  

There’s a second part of the research, as well. Day-to-day and logistics help the writer to build an authentic world. But where you can add incredible depth is learning about the types of people who do the job in real-life. 

In reading profiles about these cleaners, one thing became clear. They see the worst of the worst every day. They see the aftermath of family annihilations and teenagers shooting at each other for no reason, car crashes and stabbings and unending violence. 

They can get cynical, they can get a hard outer shell that takes a lot to crack just because it’s the only option in terms of continuing on with their career. 

The cleaners have to grapple with death, humanity’s darkness and their own mortality, and then they have to charge someone a cleaning fee on some of the worst days of their lives. Understanding the psychological trade-offs involved in the job was just as important as knowing that Georgia, where my main character lives, has some of the strictest paperwork requirements in the country for its crime scene cleaners. 

Those tiny real-life details lend credibility to the story, but what will keep readers flipping the page is learning about Olive, who is operating in a world of practical cynics yet manages to keep the dignity of the dead at the forefront of her mind during every job. 

Death might pay well for Olive, but that doesn’t mean she ever forgets that what she is cleaning up was once a human being with a full life and people who loved him.  

—

Brianna Labuskes is the USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and Amazon  Charts bestselling author of The Lies You Wrote, The Truth You Told, and By the Time You  Read This in the Raisa Susanto series; See It End, What Can’t Be Seen, and A Familiar Sight in the Dr. Gretchen White series; and Her Beautiful Life, Her Final Words, Black Rock Bay,  Girls of Glass, and It Ends with Her. She lives in Pennsylvania with her puppy, Jinx. For  more information, visit www.briannalabuskes.com. 

CLEAN SLATE

A crime scene cleaner is on the trail of a serial killer in a breathtaking novel of psychological suspense by USA Today bestselling author Brianna Labuskes.

Death pays well for Olive Hunt, a crime scene cleaner who channels her childhood traumas into erasing the suffering of others. After nearly ten years, she’s seen it all. Nothing rattles her anymore.

Until now.

Two back-to-back suicides. A seedy motel. An upscale Atlanta hotel. No connection―except that Olive discovers the same strange item at each scene. Then a third body drops. Olive knows what the police refuse to see: These aren’t suicides. They’re murders staged to perfection.

Then the roses arrive. A vase of bloodred blooms on her doorstep. An anonymous note: Thank you.

She’s found him. A serial killer who’s been leaving breadcrumbs only she can see. A killer who’s been cleaning up his work―knowing she’ll clean up after him. A killer who wants her to follow.

And follow she must. No matter how terrifying the trail becomes.

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