In the name of all that’s holy and sane, don’t try watching “10 Days of a Bad Man” without first watching “10 Days of a Good Man.” I’ve seen the earlier film, part of a planned trilogy of adaptations of novels by Turkish author Mehmet Eroğlu, and I was still pretty much lost through the middle acts of this Asia Minor whodunit.

No, the director and screenwriters — one of whom was unhelpfully Eroğlu himself — haven’t learned to “kill your darlings” and thin this Byzantine tale of the further misadventures of 50ish ex-con, disbarred lawyer and pill-popping private eye Sadik down to something coherent.

The meandering script is a tsunami of names, characters both on camera and off. Here’s what it sounds like.

“Jale?” “Gul?” “Who’s Timurlenk?” “Find Ferhat!” “Who’s Yasemin?”

Scores of names are hurled at Sadik, now going by “Adil” but still a figure of weary, literary charisma thanks to the performance of Nejat Isler.

This time out, he’s summoned by the mob boss from the first film who’d now love to just be addressed as “Sir” (Erdal Yildiz) to find this guy, Ferhat. As you might remember from the first film, Sadik-now-Adil ran up quite a “debt” of favors to “Sir.” A bad car wreck in the opening scene of “Bad Man” just adds to his bill.

A gorgeous doctor (Hazal Filiz Küçükköse) of confusing ties to Adil also wants our Istanbul gumshoe to find out who killed her uncle.

And to manage these two cases, in between pain pills, in “10 days,” our injured Adil will need his niece-not-his-niece Pinar (Ilayda Akdoga) to run social media searches and get him into clubs and whatnot, all the while coming on to a guy almost three times her age.

“You’re in love with me,” skin-baring Pinar purrs in Turkish, or dubbed into English. “You just don’t know it yet.

Her constant come-ons remind us that male wish fulfillment fantasies know no borders.

In the first film, our PI narrated his story and was obsessed with classic fictional private eye Philip Marlowe. Here, he’s just read ‘Hamlet’ and can quote “O, that this too too solid flesh would melt,” and trots out “You know I read ‘Hamlet.’ Don’t underestimate me.”

But the older woman who keeps calling him “Columbo” is the one who’s onto something. Sadik-now-Adil reads people, sifts clues and uncovers motives. And he’s a little slow and annoying as he does it.

The clutter of characters, seen and unseen, of agendas, settings and off-camera complications render this film as much of a lumbering muddle as the first installment in the trilogy. But then you remember all the unseen faces we hear Marlowe prattle on about in “The Big Sleep” or Sam Spade sputter through in “The Maltese Falcon,” so maybe it’s just a Turkish version of that, albeit a duller and slower one.

And there’s a fine, action-packed finish that does a bit to tidy things up, even though one of Adil’s cases is solved perfunctorily and the other with guns.

I’ve kind of given up hope that these thrillers will travel better and improve with each outing. You’ve still got the author co-writing the script and refusing to cut it, and a TV-trained director who can’t talk him into that as he shoves 22 episodes worth of complications into a 124 minute movie.

At least Isler makes an agreeable tour guide through these intrigues, getting his man or getting his woman, even if we can’t help but cringe if and when he “gets the girl.”

Rating: TV-MA, violence, sexual situations, pill popping, smoking, profanity

Cast: Nejat Isler, Ilayda Akdogan, Riza Kocaoglu, Hazal Filiz Küçükköse, Ilayda Alisan, Kadir Çermik and Erdal Yildiz

Credits: Directed by Uluç Bayraktar, scripted by Damla Serim and Mehmet Eroğlu, based on the novel by Mehmet Eroğlu. A Netflix release.

Running time: 2:04