Dieser Beitrag enthält Werbung – advertising.
I’m just gonna do the job.
Why would someone keep a body for 30 years?
Where, how, and why did he die?
Was it an accident? Was it manslaughter? Was it murder?
Cassie in “Season 4“
How NOT to get away with Murder
What happens when someone dies?
I don’t speak about a peaceful death related to age or a serious illness – I think of manslaughter or even murder. Suddenly there is a corpse, there is blood, there are witnesses, there are bystanders – guilty because they didn’t do anything to prevent the disaster.
Out of the moment anybody tries to make oneself scarce, hide the corpse, clean up everything … tries to forget and to move on. Obviously this proceeding is successful especially when the body is buried or walled in or whatever – in any godforsaken place for a start. People resume their lives, move anywhere, forget … try to forget.
It’s fine as long as the body doesn’t reappear – suddenly.
Unfortunately our world, our environment is in constant change. New roads are built, old houses are demolished, there is severe weather with lots of rain causing floods and landslides. A body might have been hidden painstakingly, eventually something finally resurfaces.
From this moment it’s a cold case.
From this moment it’s a case for Cassie and Sunny and their small team because if there is a corpse hidden anywhere it’s self-evident that there is a crime.
Cassie and Sunny always start with some body or body parts, more or less decayed. Some rags may appear, maybe even some sort of personal papers. The first challenge is to identify the person and determine the time of death or disappearance. It’s always far back: twenty years, thirty years or so, an era when DNA probing and matching was an unknown science.
Nevertheless Cassie and Sunny are successful. Parallel to the digging in the past you are introduced – from the very beginning of the season – to some people and their daily lives. As a rule in most cases we are learning about respectable and successful people with careers behind or even in front of them. They live in pretty suburbs, in their own homes, elegantly furnished. Also sometimes they seem to have failed to continue living in ostensible peace – they crashed by some means or other. These people are not connected to the investigation – at least not at this point. However, before long Cassie and Sunny will find some relations, will visit some relatives and deliver the bad news.
How do people act on the news from the past?
As a rule they are scared and try to fight anything off pleading of having no memory at all what might have happened in the past. In their new lives they built during the last decades there is no space for some nasty affair in their past that they’ve buried so deep. Or they have a breakdown because for all the long years they asked about the whereabouts of a loved one. Somehow … at a moment all is fragile and tends to collapse: lives are devastated, futures are destroyed, family and friends are desperate about the news from the past.
Cassie and Sunny are reckless: they want to know what happened – and they succeed. Bit by bit they find out about the past and the events that led to the death of their victim. At the end justice will win. (There’s only one case when Cassie and Sunny are struggling …)
Each of the seasons deals with a cold case. There is enough time to watch the investigation as well as to peek into the lives of some randomly selected people – randomly until relations to the victim come clear. All of them are far from the social circles which were important in the past resp. when the crime happened.
Of course there is also another storyline: the private lives of Cassie and Sunny. Cassie has to deal with her father, who is on the slowly becoming apparent verge of dementia, her grown-up son still living at home, and with dreaming of a life with a partner which will happen. Overall Cassie is a workaholic when there is a cold case. She is obsessed with serving justice and makes this her very personal challenge.
Sunny has got a wife, who decided to share her life with her new soulmate and left him with their teenage daughters, he has to care for now, sometimes creating a madhouse at home. He longs for a partner and also he gets involved in a new relationship. He is reserved, but nevertheless also determined to solve the cases, reminding me of being solid as a rock.
All’s well that ends well?
Unfortunately Cassie dies at the end of season 4 – I don’t think I reveal too much at this point.
Nevertheless the series continues: Sunny and the team get a new boss, another female DCI – Jessica “Jessie” James. In short they have a rough start … Cassie – it’s not easy to follow in her footsteps. Apart from that the plot of season 5 is as enthralling as ever.
… and about Jessie: she is married with two children, however, her husband cheated on her in a very bad way – and decided to move out. Jessie is angry, furious and devastated – especially when learning who is her rival … All this when just her new job is starting!
I’m really excited to learn when the next season starts.