Detective Colin Zabel

Colin Zabel is the county detective brought in to help Mare Sheehan crack the murder of a local teenage girl. Eager and a little awkward, he's over-caffeinated and over-earnest, cracking jokes at bad moments and clearly desperate to prove himself to a partner who barely tolerates him.

Peters plays him as pure, guileless enthusiasm dropped into a town exhausted by grief, and the mismatch is where the charm lives — his puppyish competence needling against Mare's weary competence. The writing lets him be genuinely funny and genuinely good at his job at once, which makes you like him faster than you expect to.