T.M. Logan's The Catch book ending is a masterpiece of suspense and with the Channel 5 adaptation almost here, fans might be curious about what lies in store.
If you raced through to The Pale Blue Eye ending and loved The Holiday on Netflix last year, then there’s another atmospheric adaptation starting on January 25 which is definitely worth a watch. Like The Holiday, it's based on a T.M Logan thriller and The Catch tells the dark tale of Ed Collier whose daughter Abbie is head-over-heels for her new boyfriend Ryan. Though from the moment they first meet, Ed's not so convinced he's what he appears to be. Haunted by a secret of his own, his suspicions soon turn to obsession. The Catch book ending ties up the many twists and turns in chilling style and if you’ve yet to read it, you might be a little curious.
Here we break down the downright disturbing The Catch book ending and reveal why changes made to the Channel 5 drama suggests its finale might take a different path.
*Warning: spoilers ahead*
The Catch book ending explained - breaking down T. M Logan’s bestselling thriller
From the start of The Catch book, Ed Collier had serious problems with daughter Abbie’s new boyfriend Ryan Wilson. And though there might be doubts initially as to whether he’s just an overprotective father, believe me, by The Catch book ending you’re left wishing you trusted Ed’s instincts all along. It seems the perfect man really was too good to be true, but T.M. Logan’s book ending takes this to the next level.
Not only is Ryan responsible for killing Ed to remove him from Abbie’s life and stop his interference, but he’s also a serial killer who lives for the sense of euphoria he gets from seeing someone cross the barrier between life and death.
In The Catch book ending Abbie finds documents that a private detective had found for Ed which include newspaper articles about Ryan’s past. It turned out he’d been lying through his teeth and had burned his family home to the ground as an 11-year-old in Canada, killing his parents and sister Stacey. His birth name was Ryan Steven Getzler and in a chapter from his perspective readers see him joyfully recall the memory of standing in the snow watching the house burn.
After this terrifying incident (which he wasn’t suspected of causing) he was sent to live with a great-aunt in Manchester, UK before being fostered by Eileen Jackson in the same city. She went missing a few years later and yes, as you might’ve guessed by now, Ryan was behind it. He’d also dealt with George (Abbie's ex-boyfriend) to remove his rival.
Abbie found out that at 20 year old Ryan had married a woman called Lori but was sent to prison after being convicted of assault, wounding and possession of an offensive weapon against her. She initiated divorce proceedings but shortly after he was released from prison she went “missing” too. In The Catch book ending Ryan and Abbie end up having it out in the heart of the Dark Peak in the Peak District after walking around nearby handing out missing person posters.
In his 1st person narrative, Ryan describes Blackden Moor as “his” area and it emerged that he lured Ed to an ambush, having found a GPS tracker in his back-pack. He set up a fake Facebook profile and had fake calls with a fictional lover he knew were being overheard to get a suspicious Ed where he wanted him, before burying him on the moor.
Ryan was also behind a staged empty bottle of vodka, Google searches on the computer for the Peak District and blood found in Ed’s car to create a false impression of Ed’s mental state. But his love of keeping souvenirs of his crimes caught up with him and when Abbie found a Grand Canyon #1 Dad knife in his belongings that she’d bought Ed, she put two and two together.
In the final showdown on the moor, Ryan attempted to kill Abbie even after she told him she was pregnant with his child. The reader learnt that he married her because "married men drew less attention" and that he’d learnt the "importance of lying well. And not just lying with words, but with actions too.”
Before he could kill Abbie, Claire arrived to save her after having a bad feeling about her daughter and Ryan. The two women fought back and though Ryan horrifically wounded Claire with a knife, he was then stabbed by Abbie and died on the moor.
The Catch book ending then jumped to a year later when Claire and Abbie were laying flowers on Ed and his son’s graves. Ed’s body had been found on the moor, as had the bodies of Ryan’s first wife Lori, his foster mother Eileen and two other unidentified women. By this time Abbie had given birth to her and Ryan’s son and the final words of the book reveal that his eyes were, “His father’s eyes”.
The extent of Ryan’s disturbing hunting behavior is also made clear in The Catch book ending. Prior to his demise, he explained in his narrative that he pre-dug graves on the moors and filled them with a lilo to keep the shape so they were ready for his victims. He also had night-vision goggles and drugs ready for use too and it was made clear that Abbie was part of his cover, not the end of his desire to carry on killing.
How could Channel 5’s The Catch ending differ?
If you’ve yet to read T.M. Logan’s The Catch book then you might well be a little surprised by the changes that have reportedly been made to the Collier family and their home in the gripping Channel 5 show. In the Channel 5 drama which starts on January 25, as per RadioTimes.com, the setting is now the coast of the South West of England where Ed is a fisherman.
In contrast, The Catch novel is set in Nottingham and the Peak District and that's not Ed's profession at all. That line of work is something created for the show and is a fairly major change given how much the Peak District is the focus of the dramatic showdown between Ryan and Abbie and Claire in The Catch book ending.
So with this in mind and knowing how even the best book-to-show and best book-to-movie adaptations inevitably make some tweaks, The Catch could differ from the book’s plotline when it comes to the ending too. Of course, it’s likely that Ryan will remain a serial killer and murder Ed when the devoted father’s determination to catch his son-in-law up to no good. This is the entire solution of the original mystery so it would certainly come as a major shock if that part were to deviate from The Catch book ending, though it's possible it might do.
But the change of location means that unless the characters travel up to the Peak District as the episodes go on, Ryan’s Dark Peak burial ground is currently seeming unlikely to feature in the show.
This means the Channel 5 drama could possibly end up changing how and where Ryan is disposing of his victims to make the events all take place near to their West Country home. Meanwhile, his book counterpart’s past living in Manchester with Eileen and then his first wife Lori might also be a little different and made more West Country-focused in The Catch adaptation.
Ultimately, we'll just have to wait and see as The Catch show lands how many of the same plot-threads start to emerge building to episode 4 or whether things do start to go in a different direction. We can't wait!
How to watch The Catch
If you’re eager to dive into The Catch whether you’ve read T.M. Logan's 2020 book or not then the place to head is Channel 5. The drama is split into 4 episodes, each an hour long, and airs every Wednesday at 9pm on Channel 5 starting from January 25, with episodes made available to stream afterwards on My5.
If you’re abroad when The Catch airs then you won’t be able to watch like you normally would due to regional restrictions. Luckily there’s an easy solution and you can use a VPN to continue watching. This is a handy bit of software that changes your IP address so that you can access on-demand content or live TV just as if you were at home.
Our sister site, TechRadar, has tested all of the major VPN services and they rate ExpressVPN as the absolute best. They say, “It’s compatible with all of your devices, supports most streaming services, and ranks among the fastest. You can even install it on devices like an Amazon Fire TV Stick, Apple TV, Xbox, and PlayStation. So for a one-stop-shop, you can’t go wrong with Express.”
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