Former police officer Jackson Brodie (Jason Isaacs) is a private investigator in Edinburgh. When we meet him he is following the cheating wife of a client to take pictures catching her in the act. He runs to stay in shape, not jogging mind you, but running. While he runs, he reflects back on an incident in his own childhood when he was running and calling a girl's name.
While on stakeout his secretary calls him to say that Binky, who we learn is literally the crazy old cat lady, has called to report one of her cats missing and would Brodie come and find her. He heads over straight away after a remark about working a case he gets paid for, and while looking through the backyard he overhears a commotion at the neighbors and being the generally inquisitive type pops up over the fence to see what is going on. Two women are clearing out the home of their recently departed father and come across the stuffed animal of their sister who has been missing for 30 years, and as far as they knew so had the doll. They persuade Brodie to take their case and make one last look for the missing girl.
Back at the office, a man comes in asking for Brodie to look into finding his daughter's murderer, but is denied because Brodie doesn't want to work an open police case. We later discover why - not only does Brodie respect the police in doing their job, most of them don't like him, because he took down two of their own on rape charges. Eventually, the man tracks Brodie down at his home and convinces him to look into the case.
Throughout all of this, Brodie is spending time with his daughter who lives with estranged wife who informs him that she is taking a job in New Zealand, but will "only" be away for a year or so.
Brodie confronts the father about the daughter's having a boyfriend and pushes the point because he believes she knew her killer, but it is more than the man can take and he has an asthma and/or heart attack and nearly dies.
To put an otherwise horrible day to bed, Brodie heads to a bar where he does his best to drink his wine in private, but gets picked up by an attractive blond woman who later tells him in a post-coital conversation that she sought him out to hire him for a case. In the middle of being incredulous, he spots a car that has been following him for a couple of days and goes out to confront the driver, but is struck from behind and left lying in the middle of the street to think about running as a child - running to arrive at the scene of officers pulling his sister's body from the river.
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Isaacs is more than just eye-candy in this mystery. He is quite engaging as a somewhat stereotypical single father, who helps people for the right reason. He's enough of a bad boy to be interesting, though. The actress who plays his daughter, Millie Innes, does an excellent job as well. I never with a child actor, or any actor for that matter, if they're good at acting until I see them play at least two roles as you don't know if they're just being themselves. But you can tell right off the bat if they're bad, and this young woman fits the former category. I'm impressed when anyone can remember that many lines of dialogue and deliver it in a believable and unforced manner, but especially children.
I did find it a bit, um, jarring to suddenly see Brodie and the blond in flagrante delicto, but that is due to my prudish American television upbringing where it is okay to show a grizzly murder but not a person's naked arse.
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