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Harlan Coben. Do I need to say more? Well, yes, if you are not familiar with Harlan perhaps I should say a little more. He writes murder mysteries. They aren't great books, but they aren't terrible either, they just seem to be a bit off. Perhaps because he concocts convoluted tales and when he tries to tie up all the loose ends, you have a package that doesn't quite fit in the container and you have awkward bits sticking out here and there.

Somebody took one of his stories and made it into an eight episode mini-series that is now playing on Netflix. It looks like it is set in England, but it's awfully sunny, and their accents were a bit off, which made me think that maybe it's set in Australia. But no, it's set in England. They used locations all over northwest England.

Stay Close Locations

They were a couple of locations that stood out. They didn't play an important part of the story, just some interesting scenery.

Silver Jubilee Bridge
Just upstream from Liverpool
(Wikipedia article here)

Blackpool Central Pier

The Central Pier is another item that made me think this wasn't England. I mean it looks like fun, and the English are pretty much down on having fun, aren't they?

The story starts when Carlton Flynn, son of Del, a local bigshot, disappears. Detective Broome and his partner, who happens to be his ex-wife, get assigned to the case, but since Carlton is a young man and young men are known for being irresponsible bug heads, and he's only been missing for a day, they don't give it much thought. But Del is used to getting his way and since Carlton is his only son he's all up-in-arms and wants his son found right now.

Meanwhile in another part of town, Megan is planning to marry the man she has had three kids with and has been living with for the last 16 years. Here's when things start to go off the rails. She pays a visit to Vipers, the local nightclub, just to say goodbye to her former life, the life she left 16 years ago. Yes, it makes no sense, but people do crazy things and maybe the impending marriage tipped her over the edge. 

Then there is Ray Levine, a not so successful photographer. One of his gigs is as a paparazzi for hire. People who want to look like celebrity can hire Ray to chase them around so it looks like they are famous. Never heard of such a thing, but sure, in our wondrous world surely such things are possible.

Ray was in love with Megan in her previous life (when she was known as Cassie). His life pretty much stopped when she disappeared.

I was thinking it was pretty weird that Ray had never run into Megan in 16 years even though they lived in the same town, but maybe they didn't live in the same town. There are all kinds of towns scattered over this area, so I suppose it's possible they would never cross paths even though they only lived 20 miles apart.

Thinking about this show I realized there were a bunch of characters. I compiled this list of characters I remembered from Wikipedia and IMDb.

About halfway through the show a young couple show up. They are young, attractive and preppy, all neat and clean. They sing and dance and torture and kill people. Really dastardly villains. Turns out Del, unsatisfied with the police performance has hired them to find his son, and they will use whatever methods they deem necessary to get the job done, even if it means killing everyone in town.

Broome's boss (Goldberg) is an annoying jerk. Of course he is. I think that's a standard requirement of TV cop shows. Harry Sutton is down at the heels lawyer who has become a heroin addict. He still manages to do his job, which mostly entails representing the girls who work at Vipers. He is quite the character.

There were a couple of characters I couldn't figure out. They showed up a couple of times, but I don't remember their names and the websites didn't give me any clues. One was the black wife of Guy Tatum. She's nine months pregnant and a former soldier. I think she may have been in the same outfit as Broome. The other was the 400 pound administrative assistant who rides around on an electric mobility scooter in the cop shop.

P.S. There is one scene where a girl dips her fingertip into a drink to see whether the drink has been spiked with Roofies. When her fingernail changes color she knows. Seems like a great idea, so great that Undercover Colors tried to develop such a fingernail polish. It didn't work out, but they do have a test that works much like a pregnancy test - you just need a drop of the drink.

Don't worry, the bad guys get theirs and most of our heroes survive.