When Dublin Murders begins, the first thing we hear is Killian Scott’s voice. He says, “What if the killed are the lucky ones? The rest of us aren’t lucky at all. Not blessed. Not watched over by some kind angel. The ones who get left are just too slow, too stupid. The gods don’t want them.” We eventually see his tear-stained face. He’s exhausted and can barely keep his head up. Scott’s Detective Rob Reilly is a broken man, and we will soon discover how he got to this point. Killian Scott’s performance is one of the most underrated of the year.
Unlike standard police procedurals, Dublin Murders features a pain of characters whose pasts are as a dark as the grisly crime scenes they investigate. There is a kinship between Rob Reilly and Sarah Greene‘s Cassie Maddox–both have witnessed and experienced events that have forced them to reconsider their identities and their personas. They can rely and depend on one another. A new case involving the seemingly ritualistic murder of a young local girl sends each of them into a personal tailspin.
Scott brings a quiet, tenacious intelligence to Rob, but he feels like a man who never learned how to cope without his mind. He doesn’t know how to connect his brain and his heart (when he shuts someone out, I have to admit that I was shocked by the things he said). Maybe part of him will always be trapped in the tangled branches of those mysterious woods.
