Ruby Herring Mysteries: Her Last Breath

Dream Note

Ruby Herring is back, and she's doing that thing where she treats crime scenes like they're her personal Sudoku puzzles and everyone else is just obstacles with badges. This time around, a car wreck that looks about as accidental as a reality show plot twist draws Ruby and her perpetually exasperated partner Detective Killian into yet another mystery. Their dynamic is the classic opposites-attract routine: she's chaos in a cardigan, he's order with a jawline, and together they solve cases with the kind of bickering chemistry that would make any couples therapist put a down payment on a yacht. So they crack the case. High fives all around. Probably some light flirting over a crime board with the red string. But this is Ruby we're talking about, and Ruby doesn't do closure. She does 'wait a minute, something's off,' which is essentially her catchphrase at this point. She unearths fresh evidence suggesting their neat little solution might be about as reliable as a weather forecast, and suddenly the whole investigation does a 180 that would give a theme park ride a run for its money. Taylor Cole plays Ruby with the kind of determined perkiness that suggests she'd be absolutely unbearable at a dinner party but indispensable if you'd been wrongfully accused. Stephen Huszar's Killian manages the impressive feat of looking simultaneously annoyed and charmed, which is essentially the facial expression of every man who's ever fallen for someone who makes his professional life a living nightmare. The movie knows exactly what it is: comfort food with a twist, the literary equivalent of a crossword puzzle that's just hard enough to make you feel smart when you finish it. It's Hallmark mystery perfection, delivering exactly the kind of cozy suspense that makes you want to wrap yourself in a blanket and judge fictional people's life choices.