Three Words I Never Thought I'd Write by Susan Van Kirk

I’m new to Writers Who Kill, and A Death at Tippitt Pond—my fifth mystery—is coming out June 15 from Encircle Publications. It’s a first mystery in a new series, and the plot relies completely on the results of a DNA test.

Seems simple, right? Uh, no. Not for me.

I should explain that science was the bane of my existence in high school. Imagine my horror when I realized I was required to take a science class my junior year—me, the English and history person. Pictures of my sinking GPA coursed through my brain. This would be a nightmare. I signed up for chemistry and quickly realized my teacher was speaking in a foreign tongue. Moles, protons, Bunsen burners, and possibly explosions—leading to expulsion or possible prison if I killed people—haunted my sleep. How was I going to survive this class? I was nothing if not resourceful. I grabbed a brilliant lab partner who was going into the medical field. With her lead on experiments and endless cramming before tests, I survived. Yolanda saved my GPA. Victory was mine. I had defeated science.

Fast forward to college. Since I had foolishly signed up for physics my last year of high school and dropped it after two hopeless weeks, I now had a one-semester college science requirement. Where was Yolanda when I needed her? Could I survive a second time? The first day of Biology 101, the professor teamed me with a lab partner—a guy from New York City. Imagine my horror when we dissected a fetal pig, and he saved the heart to send to his girlfriend who had recently and unceremoniously dumped him. I thought he was kidding. He wasn’t.

Nor am I.

Let’s simply say I sighed with relief when I passed the biology class, and figured I’d never have to deal with science—or my mad scientist lab partner—ever again.

Then I decided to write mysteries. I honestly believe I subconsciously chose to write cozy mysteries rather than detective procedurals because I knew if I wrote the latter I would have to wrestle with science.

Forensics=science.

My publisher waited two full years before releasing my second Endurance mystery. To keep my audience reading, I decided to self-publish a novella in between the novels. When I wrote The Locket: From the Casebook of TJ Sweeney, I forgot forensics=science and focused the plot on my detective who was trying to solve a cold case from the 1940s. Sweeney had a murder victim, but identifying her proved difficult because no DNA information existed back then, and unless she was in a missing person’s database, Detective Sweeney had no chance to figure out the victim’s identity or what happened to her. So far, I was relieved—no science for me.

Whoa. How was my detective going to identify this person? With great reluctance, I began researching the science of DNA. I read forensics books, and I talked with a county coroner who was quite an expert on it. While I can’t tell you the solution and spoil the mystery, let’s just say that I figured it out and began to feel a little better about my past wrestling match with science. After all, in this competition I was three and science was zero.

In my latest book, A Death at Tippitt Pond, we’re dealing with a possible inheritance that hinges on a DNA match. Remember the famous trials you’ve watched on television in years gone by? The DNA evidence took FOREVER to come back. My plot couldn’t wait that long. I’d have to tap dance for two hundred pages. Then I discovered a 2010 article about a new DNA test whose results took four hours. HOURS, not months. The study was first published in Analytical Chemistry. Bingo. While the new test wasn’t yet widely used by police departments, the science was there, and—bonus—I could understand it. In the past year, an even faster DNA test has become available. This solved my plot problem and made identification of people and their relatives much faster.

Hooray for science—three words I never thought I’d write.