I’ve always
wanted to write a back-from-the-dead book, which is one of my favourite tropes
in romance.
A Prior Engagement wasn’t
supposed to be it.
But through the writing of the first two books in my Special
Forces series I’d become intrigued by Lee Davis – outgoing, fearless and larger than
life – killed when an IED exploded under the patrol vehicle in Here Comes The Groom.
I’d
originally intended that his fiancee Juliet Browne would find a new love
through his army buddies’ matchmaking except I couldn’t come up with a
character as interesting as Lee. So I thought, Can this man be saved?
One
of the problems of resurrection is that, in the absence of a
body, the legal process of
being declared dead can take seven years (twenty
in Italy!).
However if the person
has been in "imminent peril" – a plane crash, battle, a passenger on
the Titanic - and fails to return “courts will generally assume the person was
killed even though the usual presumptive death period hasn't elapsed.”
By
filling in more details in Bring Him Home
- Lee was thrown clear by the IED blast, and ‘lost’ in confusion of battle - my circumstantial
evidence was in place.
Except I had another challenge. The
military make every effort to retrieve their fallen and Lee was in a Special
Forces Unit - the NZ SAS - ruled by the
maxim, “No man left behind.”
Clearly, I needed
a body.
So
I got to thinking, What if his captors – aware they’d be hunted down - dressed another body in Lee’s uniform and
strapped it with explosives, which were detonated by a trip wire when the
retrieval crew approached? This would all but destroy the corpse, create more
carnage and make identification nigh on impossible.
Disclaimer:
In real life writers are sensitive and care passionately for all living
creatures. When it comes to solving plot problems we’re up there with Freddy
Krueger. Apologies to the squeamish.
Certain
I’d cracked the case, I ran this scenario by a doctor who helps writers with
forensic questions and got this:
“Though the blast might harm some tissues and
make them unusable as far as DNA
analysis is concerned there would be plenty of material left to do the proper
testing. There is no way that an explosion would completely destroy a body so
that there were no tissues left at all.”
So how do you
solve a problem like Maria DNA?
After much
head-scratching, I decided a Taliban insurgent infiltrated the local allies
militia. Not only did he provide a sample – a fingertip - for DNA, he was responsible for the insider information that
led to the original ambush. And finally the circle is neatly closed.
Will
you be able to suspend disbelief reading A
Prior Engagement? I think so. Did I
labor on this constantly in the book? All this research probably resulted in two paragraphs! But because I've answered my plausibility questions, hopefully I've answered yours and we can all relax and enjoy the romance.
I went to so much trouble because I wanted my hero to come home and discover
his estate has been distributed and spent by the woman wearing his
engagement ring. The woman who'd also rejected his proposal on the eve of deployment. And I wanted him to be ambivalent toward the army buddies who unwittingly
‘left him behind.’ The same guys who, believing their dead buddy would want his
‘fiancée’ to be happy, introduced her to her new boyfriend.
Disclaimer: No heroes were (permanently) harmed in the
writing of this novel.
So how about you? Love, hate or back-from-the-dead romances?
If you love them, I’d really appreciate recommended reads/movies. At the end of
March I’m doing a draw for backlist books on my website. Visit
karina@karinabliss.com to enter.