If you're a fan of Netflix thrillers, you've probably already seen a few series based on Harlan Coben's books: The Outsider or The Innocents , for example, with more adaptations coming soon. The novelist's latest project for the streamer is Fool Me Once , about a widow who solves a disturbing mystery after her husband is murdered.
The new drama will be launched on New Year's Day, and everyone can watch it in one sitting. But if you're still eager to find out what happens, you might want to check out the ending and plot summary of the book Fool Me Once .
ghostly glitch
Maya and Joe - a war veteran and the scion of a wealthy family, respectively - are the married parents of two-year-old daughter Lily, who was murdered during an attempted robbery.
Maya's friends gave her a nanny cam to reassure her that Lily was being taken care of. But while looking at the camera footage, Maya sees what's supposed to be happening. It 's impossible: Joe is alive and on his way to visit his daughter.
This eerie sight prompts Maya to investigate the circumstances of her husband's death. In doing so, she learns that her late sister Claire was murdered with the same gun that killed Joe - suggesting their deaths are connected.
secret exposed
Maya found an online whistleblower, Corey Rudzinski, who had heard hateful audio of Maya killing civilians while in the military and considered it "collateral damage."
He explains that he never released the audio because Maya's sister asked him not to - in return she would give him secrets about Joe's wealthy family for whom she worked.
Maya also learns some disturbing secrets about her late husband, including that he had a history of violence. In high school, Joe killed his football team rival and later his brother to stop him from telling others what he had done.
Revenge...a little twisty
You can probably guess where this is going: Once Claire becomes a threat to the family's reputation, Joe repeats the pattern and kills her. In the final pages of the novel, Maya reveals that she knows this and kills Joe in revenge.
The mystery was never that , about who killed Joe and how he showed up on the nanny cam already dead. Maya learns that this was a plot hatched by Joe's mother, Judith (with the help of some video editors), to make Maya "trip up," question her sanity, and confess to murdering Joe.
During their final confrontation, Judith's surviving son Neil shot Maya. But unlike their son's crimes, they couldn't hide it: it was captured on nanny cams and shared with the world via livestream.
The epilogue reveals that 25 years later, Maya's friend and her late sister's husband stepped forward to raise Lily.
Looking back on Maya's tricky storyline, Coburn told The Huffington Post that Maya was his "favorite protagonist" outside of Myron Bolita's books. "She's strong, stoic, independent, but also hurting," he said. "She's brave and realistic, but she's not terribly warm or lovable. She's not your typical mother, but you might feel her love and devotion more because of that quality."
