It seems strange to describe an adaptation of a Harlan Coben mystery as “charming,” but the eight-part Shelter series is just that. Netflix purchased the rights to 14 of crime novelist Coben’s 34 books in a five-year, multimillion-pound agreement, and its renewal in 2022 is understood to have included the best-selling Myron Bolitar series as well. But Prime Video has picked up his young adult series, starring Myron’s nephew, Mickey, and based on the first Mickey novel.
It features less gore than usual and an even more insanely twisting narrative. But the fun – evocative of early adolescent fodder like The Goonies that the 1980s provided while waiting for you to graduate to John Hughes – is an unexpected bonus.
Mickey is played by Jaden Michael (last seen in 2021 as the teenage NBA player turned activist Colin Kaepernick in the TV drama Colin in Black & White). Even in the midst of his sadness after just losing his father and almost his mother in a car accident, his blend of calm confidence and kindness pulls you in and provides you someone to cling to while the rollercoaster narrative flings you this way and that.
Mickey is living resentfully with his aunt Shira (Constance Zimmer) in his father’s boyhood hamlet of Kasselton, New Jersey, after the accident, while waiting for his mother to be released from the institution where she is being treated for depression. (She had a heroin problem in the novels; possibly this was adjusted to make things more digestible to a TV audience, which is typically more diverse than a literary one.)
On his first day of high school, he makes friends with another newbie, Ashley (Samantha Bugliaro). We watch her being secretly photographed by a teacher, and the next day she goes gone. Soon, a tiny Scooby-Doo gang gathers around Mickey to assist him in locating her. Spoon (Adrian Greensmith, who gives a lovely performance, though it appears to have come from a more comic show) and fellow social outcast Ema (Abby Corrigan, who adds to the evanescent 80s feel by looking like a cross between Ally Sheedy in The Breakfast Club and Winona Ryder) are the oddball hackers.
They must also deal with the oddities that come with a thriller set in suburban New Jersey: school bullies; a nasty, borderline-racist local cop; a boy who vanished 27 years ago on the same date as Ashley vanished; a web of backstories, including one between the bad cop and Mickey’s aunt; and a history teacher who taught Mickey’s father, Brad, and now spends her spare time reading websites about the missing boy. There are also rising sapphic vibes everywhere.
Oh, and don’t forget the massive gothic house in which Brad became confined and “was never quite the same” thereafter. It is inhabited by the Bat Lady (Tovah Feldshuh), a fearsome crone. It has a headstone in the yard for “ES, a childhood lost for children,” and when Mickey meets the Bat Lady for the first time, she recognises his name and informs him his father is still alive.
Is she insane, or is she a delusion manufactured by our pining hero? Is she at the centre of what seems to be a growing number of mysteries? Is it only the apparent tip of a massive mystery iceberg under the suburban surface?
Mickey continues hearing the tune that was playing soon before the automobile collision in strange locations, adding to the hallucinogenic feeling. There’s a reoccurring butterfly pattern, tattoos that should fade but don’t, a pistol in Ashley’s backpack, a heavy strewing of more subtle clues that are nonetheless plainly hints (Polaroids, baseball hats, locker magnets), and plenty of secrets that everyone you meet has yet to reveal.
There’s also a developing Holocaust plot that has to start earning its keep soon if it doesn’t want to seem very nasty. But let us believe.
It seems to be a lot, and it is. But it’s all done with such panache and assurance that you can forgive the odd gaffe, such as Mickey’s very late remembrance of his father providing really pertinent information about his current situation. One can’t help but assume that would have been the first thing that sprang to mind when the strange events began.
But there is no time to think about it. Another twist is constantly on the way, and it is a feast for both young and elderly.
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