Summary
Run Away gets off to a typical start in “Seeing is Believing”, introducing various characters and seemingly unrelated subplots that are gradually going to weave together.
You know the deal by now. Episode 1 of any Harlan Coben show is always more or less the same: a string of seemingly unconnected characters and plot threads that gradually reveal themselves to all be part of a dense web of soapy trauma. Run Away is no different. “Seeing is Believing” is about the essential introductions, and, of course, the steady injection of more and more mystery, sometimes with the aid of slightly obnoxious flashback cut-ins and home-video interstitials. Whatever works.
Don’t worry – you’re not supposed to be keeping track of all this. There’s a bunch of stuff here that isn’t intended to be understood until later, with much more context. I won’t give anything away that happens down the line, since there’s no fun in that, but I will gather everything together into sections so it’s easier to make sense of as we go. Don’t say I never do anything for you.
The Missing Girl
At the core of Run Away is Paige Greene. You can tell because she’s in the flashback cold open, in which she’s seen wearing a Lanford University jersey and meeting up with a guy in a balaclava while having flashbacks of the same guy beating someone half to death. We’ll find out what this is all about in a few hours.
The important point is that, a year on, Paige is missing. She hasn’t seen her parents, Simon and Ingrid, for six months, and has been kept on a tight leash by her abusive boyfriend, Aaron Corvell. She’s a drug addict, and Simon, particularly, is desperate to save her from her circumstances and bring her home, if only he could find her.
With help from a shady sort named Dave Divine, Simon does indeed manage to catch Paige while she’s busking in a local park, covered in bruises and visibly strung out. But the nearby onlookers assume Simon is trying to kidnap her. When Aaron goads him, Simon batters him in front of a fitness YouTuber and becomes social media’s flavour of the month. Paige disappears once again, and Simon is arrested. Jessica Kinberg, a hotshot lawyer sent by his business partner sister-in-law, Yvonne, manages to spring him without much fuss, but his other daughter, Anya, isn’t thrilled about his newfound fame.
The Private Investigator
Allow us to deviate for a moment. While all this is going on, private investigator Elena Ravenscroft is investigating two cases simultaneously. One of them is personal; she’s hanging around a vegan cafe and keeping a close eye on the owner for reasons that will, for now, remain mysterious. But the other is obviously connected to Paige, even though it isn’t immediately obvious how.
Elena is retained by an obviously wealthy man named Sebastian Thorpe to find his missing 21-year-old son, Henry, who has been in minor trouble before for drug-related offences and never took too kindly to Sebastian’s much younger new wife, Abigail. Henry’s adopted, but he was close to Sebastian’s first wife, Gretchen, and his problems stemmed from her death when he was only 11. On the way to the initial meeting, Elena had already instructed her tech-support mother-in-law, Lou, to ping Henry’s phone, and got nothing in response, suggesting it has been destroyed. Not a good sign.
Lou’s next job is to trace the anonymous account that left a comment on one of Henry’s Instagram posts, reading, “Can’t wait to see you next week”. This isn’t revealed until later in the episode, but I might as well reveal now that the comment was left by a dummy account belonging to – all together now – Paige Greene.
The Killer Couple
Run Away Episode 1 also introduces us to Ash and Dee Dee, two rather fresh-faced assassins who are working their way through a kill list given to them by parties as yet unknown. These two will get much more focus later, but for now, their relationship and motives are left deliberately ambiguous.
They’re dangerous, though. Their latest victim is a guy named Kevin, whom Ash corners in his garage and forces into sending a suicide note – via text, this being 2026 – before executing him and staging the scene to look like he took his own life. Dee Dee had previously warned him to make sure each method of murder was different from the last, so we can safely intuit that they’d rather their killing spree didn’t look like a killing spree.
More on these two later.
The Prime Suspect
Before long, Aaron is found brutally murdered and mutilated, with his throat slashed and three of his fingers missing. Paige, yet again, is missing. Needless to say, the detectives investigating the case, Ruby Todd and Isaac Fagbenle, fancy Simon as the culprit, so much so that they embarrassingly pick him up in the middle of Anya’s parents’ evening.
Simon doesn’t do himself any favours by insisting that he’s happy Aaron is dead, but he also maintains his innocence. To try and prove it – not to mention find Paige – he and Ingrid somewhat il-advisedly decide to snoop around Aaron’s flat, which is now a crime scene, in the dead of night. They’re interrupted by Cornelius, a neighbour, who was supposedly friendly with Paige and has a key to the apartment.
Cornelius saw Paige two days before Aaron died, covered in blood and bruises, leaving the block. He points Simon and Ingrid towards her dealer, Rocco, for whom Aaron was a runner. They go to see him, but before they can explain who they are and what they want, they’re interrupted by a guy named Luther, who seems to recognise them. Frightened, he pulls a gun and shoots Ingrid. Simon screams as another shot goes off.
Welcome to another Harlan Coben thriller. Don’t mind if I do.
And Another Thing…
- Simon’s son, Sam, is at university, so you’d think he’d be pretty detached from these goings-on. However, at the end of Run Away Episode 1, we see that he’s in possession of Paige’s guitar, which she was busking with in the park. Therefore, he must have seen her since that incident.
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