**SPOILERS** In its trying to be different by putting in as many sub-plots that can fit into a 90 minute movie, I counted at least five, the made for TV movie "Presumed Dead" gets so confusing that by the time it's finally over you know less about its story then what you knew when it first started!
The movie starts off with a crazed man, who looks like he's hypnotizes, running around the woods with a large butcher knife, dripping with blood, chasing this terrified young woman. The man who's arrested later turns out to be America's top murder mystery writer Seth Harmon, Durgan Regeh, and the woman, who ends up missing by jumping into a nearby stream, Harmon's protégé Paige Stevenson, Rhonda Dent. Getting herself on the case despite the objections of her boss Captain Dade, Blu Mankuma,is the very annoying and bitchy lady detective Mary Anne Cooper, Sherilyn Fenn.
Even though "Coop", as Det. Cooper is is known by her fellow cops, is supposed to be on convalescent leave since her husband, also a cop, was killed in a hold-up earlier in the year she still manages, by her constantly pestering Capt Dade, to not only get on the case but become the officer in charge of it! This later helps Harmon, who opted to defend himself at his trial, to get off by Coop in her making a fool of herself, by testifying for the prosecution, while subjected to Harmon's whithering cross-examination.
It's after Harmon is found innocent that the movie starts to go in all different directions in trying to tie up all the loose ends in to what exactly happened to Paige Stevenson who's still on the police blotter as a missing person. And just what exactly the now freed Seth Hermon had to do with her being missing or even possibly, if Paige's body is ever found, murder!
***SPOILERS**** It soon becomes evident, at least to Coop, that Paige had ghost written Harmon's latest blockbuster murder mystery novel "Death Row Confessions". Paige now wanting to get the credit in writing that novel was going to go public in exposing Harmon for the fraud that he is. Soon Coop got another piece of information, on a typed message on her cellphone, that had to do with a previous novel-called "The Mocking Glass Murder"-that Harmon wrote, before he started suffering from writers block, some time ago. It was in that novel where Harmon describes a murder that actually took place which-now hold on to your hats-he in fact participated in!***MAJOR SPOILER**** The fictitious novel " The Mocking Glass Murder" very factually described the true story of the vicious suffocation murder of Heather Mason, Tracy Trueman, who just happened to be Paige's mom! The question now is if Paige is in fact dead then who's supplying Coop with all this explosive information that only the missing and presumed dead Paige Stevenson who witnessed her moms murder, while hiding in a closet, could possibly have known!
The movie starts off with a crazed man, who looks like he's hypnotizes, running around the woods with a large butcher knife, dripping with blood, chasing this terrified young woman. The man who's arrested later turns out to be America's top murder mystery writer Seth Harmon, Durgan Regeh, and the woman, who ends up missing by jumping into a nearby stream, Harmon's protégé Paige Stevenson, Rhonda Dent. Getting herself on the case despite the objections of her boss Captain Dade, Blu Mankuma,is the very annoying and bitchy lady detective Mary Anne Cooper, Sherilyn Fenn.
Even though "Coop", as Det. Cooper is is known by her fellow cops, is supposed to be on convalescent leave since her husband, also a cop, was killed in a hold-up earlier in the year she still manages, by her constantly pestering Capt Dade, to not only get on the case but become the officer in charge of it! This later helps Harmon, who opted to defend himself at his trial, to get off by Coop in her making a fool of herself, by testifying for the prosecution, while subjected to Harmon's whithering cross-examination.
It's after Harmon is found innocent that the movie starts to go in all different directions in trying to tie up all the loose ends in to what exactly happened to Paige Stevenson who's still on the police blotter as a missing person. And just what exactly the now freed Seth Hermon had to do with her being missing or even possibly, if Paige's body is ever found, murder!
***SPOILERS**** It soon becomes evident, at least to Coop, that Paige had ghost written Harmon's latest blockbuster murder mystery novel "Death Row Confessions". Paige now wanting to get the credit in writing that novel was going to go public in exposing Harmon for the fraud that he is. Soon Coop got another piece of information, on a typed message on her cellphone, that had to do with a previous novel-called "The Mocking Glass Murder"-that Harmon wrote, before he started suffering from writers block, some time ago. It was in that novel where Harmon describes a murder that actually took place which-now hold on to your hats-he in fact participated in!***MAJOR SPOILER**** The fictitious novel " The Mocking Glass Murder" very factually described the true story of the vicious suffocation murder of Heather Mason, Tracy Trueman, who just happened to be Paige's mom! The question now is if Paige is in fact dead then who's supplying Coop with all this explosive information that only the missing and presumed dead Paige Stevenson who witnessed her moms murder, while hiding in a closet, could possibly have known!