dramatisation of novels
Fool Me Once
I don’t subscribe to Netflix but you’d need to be an ostrich to have avoided the publicity given to one of its new dramas. On the buses, on social media platforms, on massive posters.
I haven’t seen the film, but I have read the book, Fool Me Once, by one of my favourite authors, Harlan Coben. Indeed, I have no less than eighteen of his novels on my shelves! Brilliant plotting, terrific tension, gripping storyliners, lots of confusion. Keeps you guessing till the end.
Fool Me Once revolves around Captain Maya Stern, a female helicopter pilot, now retired from the army, but plagued by incapacitating flashbacks to a mission where she killed some civilians whilst rescuing comrades in a war zone. In her private life she’s Mrs Joe Stern, married into a wealthy and powerful family, mourning the loss of her sister Claire and husband Joe, both murdered, both shot dead.
Maya has to find out how and why her beloved sister died, leaving behind a grieving husband, Eddie, and two children. She was following up a clue relating to Maya’s army experience, getting too close to secrets, when she was tortured and shot. Maya, following in her footsteps, finds herself negotiating with some dubious characters who all have something to hide, and her investigation leads her to the untimely deaths of a group of rich boys in a posh private school, one of them Joe’s own brother, Andrew, and his best friend, Theo. Andrew died in mysterious circumstances, falling off a boat far out at sea, fifteen years before she met and married Joe. Cover-ups, dirty dealings, money buying silence – it’s all there. But how much of this is the product or her own seriously troubled mind?
Then just when I’m starting to see the full picture, Coben does the unexpected and pulls the rug from under my feet. A master storyteller. One day I might watch the film but I really struggle with dramatisations that aren’t true to the original, and this one has attracted a lot of mixed reviews; I don’t want to have my mental images spoiled. Neither Martin Scorsese nor Steven Spielberg have been on the phone lately, but I’d be nervous of anyone massacring my creations! However Harlan Coben is an old hand at negotiating adaptation with film folk, so I guess he knows just how to achieve a healthy compromise. At any rate he has two more in the pipeline with Netflix, so watch this space.