HBO | PROBABLE CAUSE

Having recently watched Netflix’s excellent adaptation of Lee Child’s The Killing Floor, I’m thankful that we have Netflix (Jack Reacher) and Amazon (Harry Bosch) along with Showtime and HBO to carry the mystery mantel now that Hollywood has essentially abandoned it in favor of endless comic book super heroes.

Where once we had The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, In The Heat Of The Night, Devil In A Blue Dress, and LA Confidential, we’re now left with never ending green screen stunts and super power films mostly devoid of suspense. As Janet Maslin of the New York Times once concluded about LA Confidential: “Curtis Hanson’s resplendently wicked movie is a tough, gorgeous, vastly entertaining throwback to the Hollywood that did things right.”

As in the examples above, mysteries are stories that revolve around a main character(s), often a detective, on a quest to solve a crime. A mystery/detective story reveals the identity of the antagonist at the climax of the story. And while there are thriller elements in a good mystery, in most thrillers the reader is aware of the antagonist and things unknown to the protagonist.

I’ll admit it’s difficult to satisfyingly adapt a lengthy mystery novel within the constraints of a 90-120 minute feature film. A Netflix, Amazon, Showtime, or HBO series allows for more character development while keeping the essence of the mystery novel in tack. But as the above films demonstrate, a terrific movie adaptation certainly can be done––and done well.

So what are some of the few mystery/detective novels of the past decade that have been adapted by Hollywood? Shutter Island (2010) comes to mind as well as Gone Girl (2014), though there were enough plot holes in the book and movie to drive a truck through. Kenneth Branagh has brought us Murder On The Orient Express (2017) and Death On The Nile (2022), though both films have been done before and done better.

Fortunately, we’ve also had some great foreign mystery films, though Stieg Larson’s trilogy beginning with The Girl With The Dragon tattoo and the original Argentinian and far superior The Secret In Their Eyes were released in 2009.

Unfortunately, a Hollywood adaptation of a mystery novel is a thin and ever shrinking number. Here’s to Amazon, Netflix, and the cable channels for giving audiences the opportunity to see some of their favorite mystery/detective novels on the screen.

FBI agents finally arrested Robert Durst last Saturday at a New Orleans hotel for the murder of Susan Berman, which occurred 15 years ago.

Better late than never.

Thanks to the HBO documentary about Durst’s links to three killings, the victims’ families will finally achieve some justice from a system that has utterly failed to do its job.

In 1982, Robert Durst claimed that his wife, Kathleen, had suddenly disappeared from their cottage in South Salem, New York. No one was ever charged and her body has never been found.

In 2000, Susan Berman, Durst’s spokeswoman, was killed at her home near Beverly Hills with a bullet to the back of her head just before New York investigators prepared to question her in the disappearance of Durst’s wife.

After Berman’s death, Durst moved to Texas, where he lived as a mute woman in a boarding house until his arrest in 2001 after dismembered parts of the body of his elderly neighbor, Morris Black, were found floating in Galveston Bay. Durst claimed he shot Black in self-defense. Despite admitting that he dismembered Black’s body before dumping the remains, Durst was, unbelievably, acquitted of murder.

But the injustice that allowed a sociopath like Robert Durst to remain free for all these years while he continued to murder is not solely the fault of the justice system.

Durst is the oldest son of the late real estate mogul Seymour Durst whose Durst Corporation manages the World Trade Center and is reportedly worth $4 billion. Robert became estranged from his family when his brother Douglas was chosen instead of him to run the family business.

Despite Douglas’ fears that Robert would kill him, and the restraining orders family members took out against Robert, the Durst family spent thousands on high-priced lawyers that allowed Robert to beat the murder charge against him and to remain free.

People can argue all they want about the right to an adequate defense, but while the family’s money and power protected them, their defense of this sociopath ultimately led to the unnecessary deaths of others. For that they should be ashamed.