No Going Back

Afterword

I have taken certain liberties in the writing of this book — known to us writer types as ‘artistic licence’ — where a modicum of suspension of disbelief is expected of the reader.

For the purposes of the story I’ve grown Holbrook, Arizona, into a much larger city than it actually is, introducing motels, hotels and truck stops that do not genuinely exist there, although entities like the Wigwam Village do. I set much of the latter third of the book in and around Holbrook as it is the nearest major conurbation to the desert lands featured in the earlier segments, and it would be logical for the city to be the base for any police investigation into the fictional crimes conducted by the equally fictional Logan clan. I hope that the residents of Holbrook and their law enforcement community take the story in the spirit of thrilling adventure that I set out to write, and allow me this latitude with their fine home town.

Congenital Insensitivity to Pain (CIP) is real but very rare, with approximately thirty individuals in the USA diagnosed with the condition. Persons with CIP cannot feel, and have never felt, physical pain, although cognition and sensation — though not always temperature — are otherwise normal. Usually there are no physical abnormalities associated with CIP, though some people with the condition suffer fractures to their bones, wounds and infections due to their lack of recognition of the severity of their injuries. CIP does not make anyone super-human; they can be injured as easily as anyone else, and in many cases are more prone to injury. Again I have allowed myself a certain latitude with the condition when assigning it to the chief villain, Samuel Logan. There is no suggestion that persons with CIP have sadistic tendencies: Samuel Logan’s need to hurt others is purely a fictional adaptation and a product of the family environment in which he was raised, and I hope that this is evident from the story.

Matt Hilton