The Final Piece Of The Puzzle
The season finale of Strike: Lethal White wraps up most of our big plot points as the killer is revealed and our duo race against time to stop him or her. The episode itself begins hot off the heels of Robin’s break-up. She receives a call and races off to meet Raff for a drink in Chelsea, as scheduled. After mentioning Freddie and Geraint, Raff draws attention to her ex-husband whom Robin divulges secrets about on the back of what’s happened. Recognizing she’s in the vulnerable state, Robin winds up drinking heavily. When she awakens in the morning, she meets Cormoran outside the station. Together, they listen to Flick give his statement. He mentions how he followed Chiswell’s car to see how he was spending his money. He’d sold his tools and learnt this thanks to an anonymous tip-off. He wanted to confront Chiswell too but he wasn’t there. As the officer asks about a possible affair with Kinvara, Jimmy laughs and realizes they don’t have anything solid to pin on him. Reluctantly, the police are forced to let him go free. Interestingly though, Kinvara is not as squeaky clean as she first appears.. As Cormoran and Robin check the CCTV, they deduce that she’s at the train station to show up on camera and give herself an alibi. When she drops something in a cup for a beggar, this raises immediate red flags. The beggar – whoever this may be – clearly doesn’t want to be seen. He has his face covered and hides from the cameras. On the back of this, Cormoran and Robin work together and follow Geraint. They suss out he’s not being honest and try to get the bottom of what he’s hiding. There’s certainly no love lost between him and Chiswell, involving the death of a young girl that Chiswell was completely unempathetic about. Midway through talking to an art dealer, Charlotte approaches Cormoran and asks to talk. Sitting in a restaurant, she tells him she’s still in love. He snaps, telling her he doesn’t want her back and storms out. At the same time, Robin’s Mum rings and learns that Matt and her daughter have broken up. The next day, it all becomes too much for Robin who has a panic attack on the road. Cormoran tells her to pull over and the two discuss what she’s going through. After hugging it out, the duo head up to the Chiswell estate and speaks to Teegan. Alas the plot thickens. Kinvara allegedly smacked her husband over the head with a hammer and that’s what messed up his sense of smell and taste. This brings them over to Kinvara to try and get the truth. It turns out torture equipment was being created by Jasper. He was the one who killed Murape and despite EU regulations, sold his equipment on to the highest bidders in Zimbabwe. When Kinvara receives a message and hurries outside, Robin does her usual toilet shindig and hangs back to take photos. In the morning, Robin and Cormoran head in to see Billy, armed with several photos. One of these happens to be of Raff and a horse. He confirms that he’s the one who was strangled but not buried – the horse was actually buried instead. Given Raff had long hair in the picture, it would be easy to chalk this up to being a girl. This means Raff had a motive to destroy the family. He coerced his way into manipulating Kinvara thanks to her valuable paintings. Their affair meant nothing to him and he did all of this simply to get those paintings as they’re worth a lot of money. While Cormoran listens in to Kinvara’s interview, Robin receives a message from Matt threatening to go to the papers, determined to out Robin and Cormoran for their affair. Deciding to meet, Robin heads down to Little Venice. Cormoran senses something up and realizes this is all Raff’s plan. As he rings and tells Robin not to go, it’s too late. She’s captured and held hostage by an enraged Raff. With everything falling into place, Robin reveals the details of the case to him. Raff brushes them off though, confidently telling |Robin she has no proof. That is, until she mentions the station CCTV and how his face was captured. It’s just the distraction needed as Cormoran arrives and saves Robin from her fate. He hugs the grateful girl and watches as Raff’s taken off in handcuffs by police. With the case over, Robin and Cormoran get back to business as usual while agreeing to meet later that day for drinks.
The Episode Review
Lethal White ends with a pretty good finish, wrapping up the case in a satisfying enough way. There’s no denying though that the real meat here stems from the relationship between Strike and Robin which is teased but not followed through with. Hopefully this will evolve more with the next book adaptation. With four episodes to play with, this complicated book has been simplified as best as possible with enough enjoyable set pieces along the way. The exhaustive list of characters could have been reduced a fair amount but it’s a minor point in what’s otherwise a solid season. Fans of Strike or crime drama fans should be satisfied enough with this as Strike finishes with a bang.
