Are there two more unlikable characters than Rob Reilly and Cassie Maddox? Are there? Probably, yes. But as the show, Dublin Murders, progressed, it was hard to think of more disappointing characters in recent fiction.
A young girl is murdered in the woods of a small (fictitious) Irish town called Knocknaree. There are certain shocking similarities to an unsolved crime back in 1985, when two children disappeared in the same woods. However, back in 1985, there had been a witness – a boy named Adam. But Adam couldn’t remember anything from that day and had to flee town because the folks there suspected him.
Our Detectives, Rob and Cassie
Rob and Cassie are leading the case. They have very good rapport. Each can instantly tell what the other is thinking. This, of course, helps a lot when trying to use game theory on suspects. It’s also a bit weird, because unless together, Rob and Cassie come across as very emotionally cold.
But you pass it off as unfortunate after-effects of a life spent dealing with hardened criminals. Cassie, in particular, has been living life on the edge by doing stints as an undercover drug dealer (as you do, because nothing symbolizes “badass” as much as drug-dealing undercover agent). The spotlight on their troubling characteristics is almost as important as the Dublin Murders investigation.
The Knocknaree Case
Where is Adam and why couldn’t he remember anything? Was it really a serial killer or an imitation killer? And most importantly, that day in 1985, there were three teenagers in the woods too, who all turned out to have suitable alibis, and who are now all grown-up and living in the same town. They are definitely hiding something …
The past and the present collide, disastrously. As our two detectives delve further into the murder, they literally go off the deep end. IT IS NOT FUN. It’s horrifying and you dislike them and you pity them. It’s also fabulous acting though, so despite their ridiculous behavior, you remain at the edge of your chair, wanting to get to the bottom of things.
Despite all that wait, however, the ending to Dublin Murders is completely underwhelming. Like a mountain turned out to be a molehill. For can I really accept that all that blame lay with supernatural elements? All of that rigmarole, only to be ousted by a mysterious force in the woods? What a shabby trick!
I can’t say they didn’t give enough hints. There is Irish folklore throughout: the (were)wolf, the sleeping king under the hill, the altar of sacrifice, the fetch, changelings, warnings of (divine) “reckoning” … I can also imagine that the story was a commentary on how the Irish cling on to superstitions and the cultural tension with the English.
But I really believe that all that suspenseful build-up was for nothing, if a supernatural killer was going to conveniently take away the chorus in the end. Some readers have called the ending “insulting”; I won’t go that far but I definitely felt cheated.
The “Other” Case
There’s another shorter case interspersed — the case of Cassie’s doppelgänger who has fallen into bad company with a bunch of misfits. Someone murders the doppelgänger; so Cassie infiltrates the misfits’ manor house to find out what’s going on. (She thinks it’s connected in some way to her drug-dealing undercover case.)
This case too was also very mysterious at the start, but soon fizzles away to the point of you wanting to bang your head on the keyboard. Our badass Cassie who never shied from doing badass things becomes the girl who feels sorry for killing one psycho misfit in self-defense. She then decides to give up investigation. Is it like a late repentance in life, accelerated by this one doppelgänger case? Perhaps. Either way, it left me disappointed with Cassie’s skills and the plot.
Final Comments / Rating:
Dublin Murders aired in October-November 2019, jointly commissioned by BBC, Starz and later, RTE (Radio-Television of Ireland). It has 8 episodes.
The Knocknaree mystery is based on Tana French’s multiple award-winning In the Woods, and the other doppelgänger case was based on French’s The Likeness. I had wanted to read In the Woods for a long time, as its arguably one of the top 100 detective fiction books out there.
But seriously, what was going on with the story? It’s as if two completely different people wrote/ directed the first half and the second half (or at least, the ending). I am unable to rate this more succinctly than “Ugh”. Please read or watch at your own risk.