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By 2011, when the show was finally broadcast - making it Robert's first TV broadcast credit at the age of 39 - Robert had become something of a poster boy for 'never giving up on the dream'. The rest of the team, all being local, just don’t understand him at all, but they all appreciate the way his mind works – eventually – after being exasperated by his methods. Soon, Helen finds herself trying to avoid becoming Instafamous while bringing some peace to a girl who very much needs it. It brings us the characters that have woed the many viewers around the world and this time they stay somewhat langer than 50 minutes around for you to enjoy them. I may be at a disadvantage because I have never watched the TV series and am only vaguely aware of it so I had no preconceptions of what this book would be like but was expecting something a bit special as it is linked to prime time drama and has many positive reviews.
Even worse, the most recent episodes have attempted to set up a sort of 'will they/won't they' romantic tension between Humphrey and Camille. I am a huge, huge, huge fan of the BBC television series "Death in Paradise," as it features "locked room" mysteries in a tropical setting wherein the detective investigates a list of suspects before bringing them all together at the end for the classic denouement where the killer is revealed. But then Ben Miller, who played Richard, decided to leave, and the character was ruthlessly killed off, taking any hopes of a love story with him.
His second in command Camille Bordey, a beautiful woman with the intelligence to match that, is always annoyed by her so quintessential English boss who at tropical temperatures still wears his woolen suit and who is so incredibly smart and a fickler for details. Twitter creeping has revealed that there are some people out there who think they have amazing chemistry, but I assume they've been watching a different show to me. I was so annoyed by this by the midpoint that I started keeping a tally of the worst offender, "After all", which was used 15 times in the second half of the book.
But, Richard follows his instincts and through a mixture of old fashioned detective work and inspiration, reveals a story that goes back 20 years and which proves that any of the people in that room could in fact be guilty. Whenever the story slowed down, my brain had time to ruminate, and as a result, whodunnit became crystal clear to me rather early on. The beginning of the mystery reminded me of Christianna Brand’s work in that, Thorogood also plants some good subtle clues in his opening chapter. A locked room murder, various suspects that appear both guilty and innocent at the same time, a grumpy but funny detective inspector, and on top of all an idyllic location on a Caribbean island under a burning sun.A must read for fans of the TV series and Agatha Christie crime classics featuring Marple and Poirot.
I also assumed that it might take place on one of the Caribbean islands (because- Death in Paradise).At an hotel a guru like figure gets lethally stabbed in a closed room with only 5 possible suspects and during the story we find out that almost all of them have a very strong reason to see this man dead.
It is a standalone Richard Poole story with all the familiar characters (and more) from the series and it is a read which I really, really enjoyed. If you're like me or Richard Poole however you'll be driven to distraction by the nagging little problems that really should have been caught and perhaps would have been in a book that wasn't presumably seen as a guaranteed money spinner and spared the editorial attention it needed. Though I continue to watch and enjoy the show with its current cast, including its primary sleuth, the bumbling and good-natured Detective Inspector Humphrey Goodman (played by Kris Marshall), I still miss the original cast, most especially the persnickety, pessimistic Detective Inspector Richard Poole (played by Ben Miller) and his number two, Detective Sergeant Camille Bordey (played by Sara Martins).This book takes us back to the beginning when DI Richard Poole has been on the tropical island for close to a year and has some issues with a small green lizard sharing his beachfront property, watch the show for the wit in that description. In fact, he’s convinced that the person who’s just confessed to the murder is the one person who couldn’t have done it. The first two series of BBC1's Death in Paradise, a murder mystery comedy-drama set on the fictional Caribbean island of Saint-Marie, has become part of this pantheon of comforting TV, and in recent times has become my go-to feelgood show. This task turns out to be even more impossible when it becomes clear that they have been followed to Weeping Creek Ranch by a murderer. We do also get some great descriptions such as this: ‘he frowned like a barn owl who’d just received some bad news.
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