Death in Paradise

The play's the thing! A touring theatre company are in town for their final performance of Shakespeare's The Tempest on one of Saint Marie's pristine beaches. During a raucous drinking scene, one of the leads keels over dead after drinking from a bottle of red wine. Tests reveal that the liquid contained a lethal quantity of cyanide. But two other actors drank from the same bottle both before and after the victim and emerged unscathed. So how on earth did he, and only he, perish?

Meanwhile, Mervin is informed that his half-brother Solomon is set to inherit everything from their deceased mother and promptly sell it off. Mervin is desperate to hold on to at least some sort of memento of her. The trouble is, Solomon will not return any of his calls. With time slipping away, Mervin may need to go unexpected lengths to reach his brother.

Mervin stumbles across a crime scene when he goes in search of his brother Solomon on Antigua. In a remote cabin, a local businessman has been shot. But Solomon and his associate Cheech both swear the other is responsible. And they're not letting Mervin go until each one has convinced him of their account. One of them is lying. But who?

Mervin and the team investigate the murder of a local newspaper's notorious agony aunt, poisoned the morning after her retirement party while reading her final advice column. The paperboy is swiftly ruled out, but the police are left stumped when he insists he delivered the stack of papers at random. Nobody else in the neighbourhood was taken ill, so how could the killer have ensured the victim would pick up the only poisoned copy?

Meanwhile, Mervin resists the counselling sessions Selwyn has imposed after the case in Antigua. And as he grapples with his feelings towards his brother, Mervin gets a rude awakening from an unexpected figure. Is blood really thicker than water?

The body of Giles, an eccentric monster hunter, is recovered from the sea. He bears injuries oddly suggestive of the legendary creature he's spent years chasing: the Lusca. The ever-rational Mervin Wilson dismisses the idea that there are supernatural elements to this case. But if this mythic beast from local folklore didn't kill Giles – who, or what, did?

Meanwhile, Mervin's life is turned upside down by the presence of his mischievous niece, Eloise. But he has a difficult decision to make about whether to break some unwelcome news to the youngster about the father she clearly loves.