Netflix's Fool Me Once Blows Up This Murder-Mystery Trope

Netflix has cranked out adaptations of Harlan Coben’s novels almost as quickly as he can write them. Eight series currently make up the “Harlan Coben Collection” on the streamer, and there are still six slots left in his 14-series deal. The Millar-verse may have stalled out after Jupiter’s Legacy, but the Coben Collection just keeps growing (to say nothing of his literary empire).

The appeal of Coben’s work is obvious to both the platform and the viewer: His books are primarily mysteries and thrillers, and the whodunit is a cornerstone of binge watching. Netflix knows that clicking “Next Episode” becomes an involuntary reflex when you’re trying to learn a murderer’s identity or get to the bottom of some unreliable narrator’s retelling. But by the time you’re on your third or fourth Coben-based limited series, they all start to blur together — and not just because Richard Armitage pops up in several of them.

As he plays with timelines and twists, Coben traffics in archetypes: imperiled teens, shady husbands, outsiders who take on the powerful. These recognizable figures make it easy to latch on to a show… and see where it’s going. That’s the case with Netflix’s latest Coben adaptation, Fool Me Once, which swaps the book’s New York setting for the fictional English town of Winherst, the better to include Armitage in the cast. We kid about that last part, but the move to a smaller town does lend the story a greater sense of isolation, as military veteran Maya Stern (Michelle Keegan) tries to make sense of her sister’s and husband’s deaths while also taking care of her toddler daughter Lily. Did she imagine seeing her late husband Joe Burkett (Armitage) in nanny cam footage, or is he pulling a Gone Girl? And who else might be in on this conspiracy?

Again, this is nothing we haven’t seen before; even the revelation that Maya’s murdered sister Claire (Natalie Anderson) was involved in a cover-up and a whistleblowing operation seems par for the course (though the mystery of how she found the time while also raising two teens remains unsolved). Winherst may be a fictional town, but viewers hardly need a tour guide when the conclusion appears this foregone. Pro-tip: If a dapper Richard Armitage character seems too good to be true, that’s because he is. Here are a few more: The pharma family is indeed evil, the guy who’s been skulking around the protagonist only looks creepy, and the odd-couple detectives will be best friends by the end.

But it’s possible that Fool Me Once uses all of these familiar markers to make the final rug pull that much more effective. We won’t spoil the ending for you here — the limited series is only six episodes, you can binge it in a single insomnia-fueled night — except to say that it shatters the illusion that Maya is merely a wronged woman looking for answers. Murder mysteries abound with women realizing they've been deceived by those closest to them. Hints that Maya isn't the standard widow searching for answers are scattered throughout season: She’s constantly criticized by her mother-in-law (the Absolutely Fabulous Joanna Lumley) for not grieving in the proper fashion, goes to the shooting range with alarming frequency, and just happens to end up under investigation herself.

Coben loves a good “the past rears its fearsome head” moment, and Maya’s past affects the lives of everyone around her. The more we learn about her, the more conflicted we are about rooting for her to find out the truth — and yet, the show hinges on Maya moving forward, no matter what the cost. The dissonance is more effective a source of tension than the central mystery itself. The truth about Maya comes out halfway through the series, but it’s like a delay-action bomb, one that doesn’t really hit until the finale.

Coben’s especially proud of his protagonist, telling HuffPost in 2016 that she's “not classically maternal, yet you sense her love and devotion perhaps even more because of that trait.” And it’s true that Maya doesn’t behave like a typical protective mom for much of the show, more focused on vengeance than figuring out how to raise a child on her own. She won’t be drawn into other people’s drama, like Evin Ahmad’s Erin Carter (though that is precisely what made that Netflix thriller an unexpected treat). Maya is caught up in a by-the-numbers murder mystery until the end; it’s when her past catches up with her that Fool Me Once finally gets one over on the viewer.

Fool Me Once is streaming on Netflix. Join the discussion about the show in our forums.

Danette Chavez is the Editor-in-Chief of Primetimer and its biggest fan of puns.