Karen Pirie is back, and she has another tricky cold case to solve. Well, it’s a historical case, as she explains when Karen Pirie season 2, episode 1 opens. She doesn’t like to call them cold cases, because of the nature of the wording.
Caution: This post contains SPOILERS for the Karen Pirie season 2 premiere.
The case itself is one from 1984, and we open with the abduction. While Cat and her friend Bonie are out getting fish and chips with Cat’s son, Adam, Cat and Adam are suddenly abducted. Cat is able to get the mask off her attacker, revealing his face.
This is important, as it means we immediately know the body that has been recovered more than 30 years later. Her abductor was a man named Kevin, who was shot by execution and had a history of working with a crime family. It’s not hard to work out that he was likely killed for something by the crime family, but the key on him is linked to Cat’s missing and burned out car from the past.
Maybe Cat could have been found much sooner in Karen Pirie
The Karen Pirie season 2 premiere spends some time in the past, as we see the original investigation. It’s possible that the entire situation could have been resolved quickly. You see, someone sent ransom notes to Cat’s parents and Bonnie, demanding a cash payment. Cat’s parents, who owned an oil fortune, were more than happy to pay the money to get their daughter and grandson back, but the police warned them not to do that.
The cops at the time focused on Adam’s father, Fergus, who was a married man working for the Grants at the time. Then they turned to another man who went to school with Cat. While this guy didn’t like the Grants or what they were doing to the environment, it was pretty clear that he didn’t do anything to Cat.
Seeing Cat’s story play out in the past
As with the first season, we also get bits of the victims’ story play out in the past. One night, Cat is out drinking with Bonnie when she goes outside and meets the bouncer at the door. They hit it off immediately and end up going home together that night.
They start a bit of a fling, and it’s by the end of the episode that we learn that this was likely all a setup. I don’t think that’s much of a twist, though, as there was something off about the guy from the start.
Karen and her task force get to work in Karen Pirie
Now an Inspector, Karen gets to lead her own task force to get to the bottom of this high-profile case. She puts her team on different aspects of the research, while she talks with the parents of Cat Grant. It turns out that they split up between Cat’s abduction and now, and they view the situation in two different ways. Her dad accepts that she and Adam have died, while her mom is sure that they will come back.
Mint, who is just adorable in the way he wants to make a good impression, calls around at the cabins in the local area. He finally comes across one where he can’t get in touch with the owner, and it’s all boarded up. When he and Karen get there, they realize that the backdrop is the same as that one in the abduction photo.
Sure enough, this was the cabin Cat and Adam were taken to. When Mint does finally find the owner of the cottage, it turns out that the brother who owned it at the time — he allegedly took his own life by jumping off a cliff, but no body was ever found — was friends with Kevin. A look at old news footage shows that Andy and Kevin were following Cat one of the nights that she was a nightclub.
It looks like it was all set up, and we find out in the past that it involves the man she was sleeping with — the man with the tattoo on his arm that she kept drawing.
This story is clearly going to get twistier before it’s solved. Andy likely isn’t dead, and we don’t know what happened to the guy with the tattoo, Mick Prentiss.
At least the episode saw Kevin’s brother, Ryan, get some answers. It turns out that Ryan worked for the Lennox crime family but ended up turning on them and went into witness protection. Karen arranged for Ryan to reach out by getting the information of Kevin’s death out on the news. He had always wondered what had happened to his brother, and there’s a sense of peace for him. He could also help with answers about Cat.
At the end of the Karen Pirie season 2 premiere, things take a turn for the worst, though. Karen and Phil (who are still dating) get back to Karen’s place to find there’s been a break-in. Everything linked to the case has been taken, including her work laptop that she wasn’t supposed to have at home. Karen’s in trouble!
Karen Pirie airs on Thursdays on BritBox.
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