It seems to me that her mother’s murder could be read as the inciting incident. To wit, after her mother is killed, her daughter swears to solve the murder and bring the culprit to justice. That’s why she became a cop, put in her time, punched her ticket to become a homicide detective.

The essence of the story seems to be that the detective doggedly stays on the case even after the trail goes cold. Well, that’s the story of a lot of veteran detectives. They have a case that goes unsolved for years and years, that become not just a profession but a personal obsession. They can’t let it go. See, for example, “The Whites”, the new well-reviewed crime story by one of the America’s great crime writers of novels and scripts, Richard Price (writing as Harry Brand).

So what is unique, compelling about the case in this logline? “…Is closer than she thinks” suggests the clue implicates someone near and dear to the detective. That would seem to be the Big Reveal, but a logline shouldn’t tip its hand about the Big Reveal.

I suggest it might be profitable to take a cue (and clue) from another celebrated crime write, Joseph Wambaugh, who observed that the best crime stories aren?t about how detectives work cases, they?re about how cases work the detectives — the psychological toll the unsolved cases have on the detectives. (As a former LAPD detective, Wambaugh knows what’s he’s talking about.)

What if the female detective is on the verge of “pulling the pin”, retiring after 20 years in law enforcement? And she’s abandoned all hope of solving her mother’s murder; the trail went cold 15 years ago.

And then a clue comes to light. Will it enable her to solve the murder? Can she bring the culprit to justice — is he or she still alive to bring to justice?

Whatever. I think the story has potential, but it seems vague and rather generic in this iteration of the logline.

fwiw

>>> what is his goal?

This raises a meta question to my demented way of thinking. My initial answer would be that the billionaire has already achieved his primary objective goal, to find the Garden of Eden in Act 1 (or thereabouts). As a result of this event, what becomes the plot of movie?

Consider the character John Hammond, the huckster-developer of “Jurassic Park”. At the start of the movie, he has already achieved his objective goal which is to bring dinosaurs back to life via genetic engineering and create a paleo-park to amuse (and profit from) the masses. The goal he has before him in Act 1 is to take care of a minor detail: he must secure an endorsement from 2 prominent paleontologists before the park can open.

And then the caca hits the fan. The movie becomes not a celebration of his success but a curse of the unintended consequences, of the literal and existential price he (and others) must pay for his hubris.

The arc of the plot of Jurassic Park adheres to the age-old dramatic principles of peripety, reversal of a character’s fortune, and enantiodromia, the swing of the plot pendulum by Act 3 to the opposite of its state in Act 1. To wit, Hammond’s Biggest Dream becomes his Biggest Nightmare. The dramatic gods always punish hubris.

So I would suggest that the goal of the plot of this logline would be the billionaire having to deal with unintended consequences of his initial success. How realizing his Biggest Dream, finding the Garden of Eden, becomes his Biggest Nightmare. How the god of the Bible and the gods of drama punish him for his hubris.(The hubris of meddling in and trying to exploit sacred objects for profane purposes — the plot arc of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” by the way.)

And as it is the logline stops short of spelling out the plot that results from the realization it’s the fountain of youth. What plot follows from that realization?