After watching the gripping and intelligent A Murder at the End of the World on Hulu, I was hungry for more. I went through every streaming service I have been suckered into paying for in search of another mystery series to while away the hours of a stormy winter night. I discovered that Netflix had dropped their latest adaptation of a Harlan Coben novel, 2016’s Fool Me Once. I bit – and I got bitten. 

In case you don’t know Harlan Coben, he is the author of thirty-five mystery thrillers. This is impressive – until you wake up early to write this and end up counting how many novels James Patterson has written (I counted 263), which is not including the novellas, short stories and picture books. Take that, Harlan Coben!

But Coben did something very smart in 2016: he signed a multi-million-dollar deal with Netflix to let them adapt fourteen of his novels. So far seven of these films have been made. Interestingly, the Coben Project has international ramifications: while three of the limited series have been made in the U.K., two are Polish, and there is one each from France and Spain. I have watched the three British series, as well as Safe, an original story that follows the same basic pattern as these adaptations. It was created by Coben but written by others. Wouldn’t you know it was my favorite?

I can’t speak for his novels, but as the inspiration for mystery series, Coben is a guilty pleasure. His plots are over-the top, but they are admittedly gripping at times. The basic premise for all of them is that an extraordinary event blasts apart the seemingly normal lives of the main character and reveals that everybody around this person is full of secrets and lies. Every episode averages about three twists and always ends with a BIG twist that reverses all that came before and sends the protagonist spinning off into a new direction. Often the main character is on the run, in true Hitchcockian fashion – although there is none of the intelligence and wit found in Hitchcock. There is also a great deal of focus on a dedicated policeman or woman on the case, a true professional who is often besieged by their own community of liars. 

As I said, I enjoyed Safe. It had a good cast and a good ending. I also had a fun time with The Stranger, which starred Richard Armitage as a happy family man – until a young woman comes up to him in a golf clubhouse and tells him his wife faked a recent pregnancy and miscarriage. Then things go off the rails, and I must confess I don’t remember much more about it. Stay Close was even more insane, but it starred Cush Jumbo (as a happy family woman until . . . yada yada yada) , and I will watch any performance by that woman. 

Richard Armitage has returned to the Coben fold for Fool Me Once. The series also features Joanna Lumley and a host of British actors from various soaps and series that I have never seen. Armitage appears exclusively in flashbacks as Joe Burkett, the oldest son of a fabulously wealthy pharmaceutical family (oh-oh!) who is gunned down in the park with his wife as witness. Joe dies in her arms, and the show begins with his funeral. Afterwards, widow Maya (Michelle Keegan) struggles to get on with her life with her adorable baby daughter. This is not easy, for a variety of Coben-fueled reasons: Maya’s mother-in-law (Lumley) is a pushy, unpleasant matriarch who never liked her and wants time alone with her granddaughter; DS Sami Kierce (Adeel Akhtar), the cop investigating Joe’s murder, is snooping around for he harbors suspicions that the wife might have been involved in her husband’s death. 

And Maya is dealing with a lot of emotional tsuris: she was an army pilot stationed in the Middle East until an incident involving collateral damage was reported by a whistleblower and got her discharged. She is also dealing with the earlier murder of her sister Claire, who worked with husband Joe (who is dealing with the earlier murder of his brother Andrew) and was seemingly the victim of a house break-in gone wrong. (It’s never that easy!) Claire left behind a husband, two children and . . . well, we’ll get there. As Maya struggles to put her life together, she is rocked by an extraordinary event: her best friend had given her a digital photo frame that also serves as a nanny-cam, and when Maya checks the footage, she finds herself staring at her dead husband visiting with the baby!!!

And that’s the premise. Over the course of eight episodes, we learn that every one of the people I’ve mentioned – the wife, the dead husband, the dead sister, her husband, the mother-in-law, the cop, and the whistleblower – have secrets. (All the kids are basically innocent at the start, but there’s time . . . ) And I haven’t even mentioned Maya’s girlfriend, Maya’s former Army comrade, Maya’s Slavic nanny, Maya’s Slavic nanny’s Slavic husband, Maya’s sister-in-law and brother-in-law. All of them have secrets. So does Joe’s younger brother, who died on the family boat twenty years earlier. And Maya’s niece’s football coach with the bloodstains in his van. And Maya’s niece’s football coach’s son. And the cop’s fiancée , his new partner, and his AA sponsor. (Or is she an AA sponsor???)

Oy. 

Listen, this is how Harlan Coben mini-series roll. This is what you must expect when you sign up for them. And if you’re willing to sink to their level, they can be a lot of fun. 

Until now. This is one of the stupidest, most poorly written mystery series I have watched in a while. Half the episodes were written by show creator Danny Brocklehurst; one of the others was written by Coben’s own wife. There are many people to blame here. When dialogue makes someone like Joanne Lumley seem like an amateur, you know something’s wrong. But all the twists and turns this story takes – I must assume we can lay the blame for them right at Harlan Coben’s door. 

Waste of time. Find something else to watch. (And if it’s good, please leave the suggestion for me in the comments below.)

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SPOILERS

This section is only for people who have watched Fool Me Once or don’t intend to. Because as a mystery fan, I have to rant a bit. The series has one twist too many which renders the whole plot completely senseless. 

Let me elaborate. 

So there are two major events that set this plot in motion. The first is the viewing of the dead husband on the nanny-cam. How can this be?!? Joe died in Maya’s arms!!! The second is when the cop comes over and discovers that Maya owns a Glock, the same type of gun that killed her sister. (We know Maya couldn’t have killed Claire because Maya was fighting overseas at the time of Claire’s death.)  When he runs the gun through ballistics, it is determined that the same gun killed both Claire and Joe!!!!! This sends Maya into an investigative frenzy for six more episodes. 

Except . . . why? Why is Maya running around like this? Why is she uncovering secret after secret about her husband’s family and her sister’s murder? Because . . . SPOILERS . . . Maya knows who killed her sister: it was her husband, Joe. And after she discovered this, Maya herself killed Joe and faked an attack by hooligans in the park. I can understand Maya being a little shocked when Joe shows up on the nanny-cam (solution: it wasn’t Joe – his evil mother Judith hired the nanny to put doctored footage into the nanny cam to rattle Maya, whom she suspected of murdering her son. EXCEPT – how did Judith know that Maya had a nanny-cam?!?!?!?) But Maya must be aware that the same gun killed both Claire and Joe: she knows Joe killed Claire, and she used the same gun to kill him!

But Maya has to investigate so that the series can hobble along from one reveal to another, like the fact that Joe also killed his younger brother Andrew on the yacht because Andrew felt guilty about the hazing that Joe instigated to kill Andrew’s best friend at school. Or the fact that Joe killed the captain of the yacht because . . . you know, it has been twenty hours since I watched and I forgot why. 

In the end, the cop (easily the best character in the show) unravels . . . something and arrests Maya. But then he lets her go to set up a sting against Judith and the whole pharma company. Yes, once again, evil pharma has created drugs that kill people and then wiped out a lot of witnesses in order to stay safe and rich. Why does the cop let Maya do this? Because – COINCIDENCE ALERT – he himself is taking some medication manufactured by this company that has nearly killed him. 

And that is what Maya does: she tricks – oh, how easily she tricks – the family into a confession, which is captured on a hidden nanny-cam, which is then sent out to the world by the whistleblower, which is how millions of viewers witness Judith’s surviving son shooting and killing Maya (and saving England the cost of a trial). 

There’s even a postscript eighteen years in the future where the cop visits Maya’s little girl, now all grown up and having given birth moments ago. “Have you given the baby a name?” he asks.  To which she responds (all together): “We’re calling her – Maya.” 

Seriously, I could write this stuff. Thankfully, I have scruples.