Writer's Job Guide: The Crime Scene Cleaner

Jul 13, 2025

Crime scene cleaners aren't your typical noir detectives or hardened cops. They arrive after the chaos, the violence, and the flashing red and blue lights, when the world has gone quiet again. And that silence, that eerie aftermath, is precisely what makes them such compelling characters.

Here’s how to bring them to life on the page.

Why Would You Need a Crime Scene Cleaner?

In fiction, a crime scene cleaner offers something different: a perspective rooted not in solving the crime, but in what’s left behind. They deal with the visceral consequences: blood on tile, brains on drywall, a soaked mattress, a stench that lingers like a ghost. They see the things no one else wants to deal with, and they carry that with them.

Including a cleaner allows your story to:

Explore aftermath over action. They arrive when the story is "over" for everyone else.
Humanize the horror. Cleaners can reflect on the humanity (or lack thereof) in a way detectives might not.
Conceal or uncover secrets. Who better to find the out-of-place object or missing clue?
Shift the tone. A crime scene cleaner can bring dark humor, philosophical detachment, or unexpected empathy.

Need a fresh POV on death? They're your character.

Useful Skills and Talents

Crime scene cleaning is more than bleach and elbow grease. A cleaner in your novel should have (or convincingly fake) the following:

Technical knowledge: Use of industrial-grade cleaning agents, OSHA-compliant handling of biohazards, personal protective equipment, etc.
Attention to detail: Miss a spot, and the smell (or a forensic clue) could remain.
Discretion: They often work in silence, unseen and unheard, protecting the privacy of both the victim and the crime.
Mental fortitude: Dealing with decomp, gore, and trauma day after day isn’t for the fragile.

Don’t forget that they might also have side skills: lockpicking, sleuthing, or knowledge of human anatomy, especially if you’re writing in the thriller or noir genres.

Common Character Traits

While no two people are the same, there are traits that feel authentic (or believable) in someone who chooses this line of work:

Stoicism: Many cleaners develop a quiet detachment as a coping mechanism.
Dark humor: Gallows humor is common. It helps manage the horror.
Curiosity: They can’t help but wonder what happened, even if they never ask.
Pragmatism: Cleaners are problem-solvers: how do I get this blood out of this carpet without tearing the floor up?

You could also flip the expected: maybe your character is unexpectedly spiritual, nurturing, or obsessed with order.

Conflicts Associated

Writing a crime scene cleaner opens up rich external and internal conflict.

Internal guilt or trauma: Did they lose someone to violence? Are they desensitized to death?
Moral dilemmas: What happens if they discover a clue the police missed or ignored?
Relationships: It’s hard to talk about your day when your job is cleaning murder scenes.
Legal gray zones: Some cleaners work with criminal organizations. Others bend the rules for the right price.

Conflict can also come from the environment: pressure from the cops, disdain from society, or stress from the cleanup job itself. A bad day in this field can mean vomiting in your mask while a grieving mother watches.

Interactions

Cleaners are liminal people. They move between the living and the dead, the law and the lawless.

They might interact with:

Law enforcement: Some relationships are cordial, others suspicious or hostile.
Victims’ families: These are some of the most emotionally complex moments. Show the empathy (or lack thereof) your character brings.
Other cleaners: Crews are common. You can build character dynamics, like mentor-apprentice or partner tension.
Criminals: Maybe they moonlight for the mob. Maybe they know how to erase more than just blood.

These interactions help shape your cleaner into more than a job title. They reveal ethics, trauma, humor, and humanity.

Make Them a Friend...

A crime scene cleaner can be a powerful ally.

For a detective protagonist: They might give insight others overlook.
For a grieving character: They offer comfort or brutal honesty during a time of chaos.
For a vigilante: A cleaner might help hide the evidence, knowingly or not.

As a friend, their loyalty is invaluable, and their silence is golden. They're the kind of character who shows up at 3am with a tarp and zero judgment.

Or an Enemy

Of course, they can also be terrifying.

They know what blood means... and how to make it disappear.
They’ve seen things that haunt them. Or maybe nothing haunts them at all.
They might clean up crimes they helped commit.

An antagonist who understands forensic procedure and how to erase it is a scary one. Maybe they were once a hero. Maybe they’re a cleaner who’s been pushed too far. Or maybe their calmness hides a monster.