Detective Inspector Neville Parker and his team solve a series of murders on the island of Saint Marie.
BBC
Series 10 of Death in Paradise was commissioned in February 2019 (together with series 9) and first aired from 7 January 2021 to 18 February 2021 on BBC One.
A TV reporter about to broadcast an expose on a prominent Saint Marie broadcaster is found dead in her swimming pool. DI Parker is convinced her co-host Garfield Tourné is responsible but at the time he was live on air interviewing his daughter. DS Cassell returns to the island to take up the vacant detective sergeant's position offered by Commissioner Patterson who does not mention Parker's idiosyncrasies for fear she would not accept. The commissioner keeps the team up-to-date on the whereabouts of Officer Ruby Patterson, who departed to Paris with DS Madeleine Dumas, however informs the team she will be extending her hiatus indefinitely.
An archaeologist is poisoned with arsenic during a dig and Parker soon has a suspect who confesses, however evidence points to her not being the culprit. The owners of the land also fall under suspicion as they were against the dig. The problem for Parker was how was the arsenic ingested, with no suspect evidence being found. The Commissioner advertises for a new officer and Sergeant Hooper is shocked at his choice of Marlon Pryce whom he knows only too well.
A lottery winner, Cheryl Jackson, is found dead in her garden by her visiting friend who herself is knocked unconscious by someone in the house. JP arrives with the friend's husband only to find out that the body has disappeared. Parker suspects the victim's husband who has an alibi provided by his pregnant lover. When the body of Jackson is found at sea in a fishing net the only clue is a shoelace in the pocket. It's the anniversary of the death of Florence's fiancée and JP's wife's pregnancy is a week overdue.
DI Parker is admitted to hospital after having a severe allergic reaction to a sandfly bite. While in hospital a nurse working in his ward apparently commits suicide with a drug overdose during the night in a locked room. Parker, though unwell, is not convinced it was suicide, and investigates, with his suspects the doctor, the patients with him in the ward, the nurse's brother who is due to inherit a legacy from a dying patient in the bed opposite Parker, and the brother's ex-girlfriend. A misplaced breakfast and an annoying frog outside the hospital croaking through a vent give him the answer.
Concert Pianist Pasha Verdinikov is shot dead, while composing in his piano room. However all the suspects - Pasha's wife, Grace, their gardener, Delford, Pasha's son, Joseph, and their housekeeper, Maggie - alibi each other. The initials "A.S", found wiped in blood on a piano stool, are an important clue and lead to Aidan Shawcross, who supposedly died in a road accident two decades earlier and who had a one night stand with Grace; yet his fingerprints are on the gun that killed Pasha. The case necessitates DS Cassell going to London. Catherine, who knows the family, is attacked in her own home. Commissioner Patterson calls her daughter Camille serving in the Paris police and was a DS at St Marie.
Catherine from her hospital bed tells Neville she spoke to Pasha at the harbour. Following that lead takes the team, DS Camille Bordey standing in for Cassell, to the neighbouring island of Sainte Hélène and a hospice with the bedridden Aidan Shawcross dying of cancer; leaving the problem, who was buried 20 years ago killed by Pasha and Aidan to fake Aidan's death. Identifying the body will explain the murder of Pasha and a microwave explains the how. Things take a turn for the worse for Catherine in hospital which Camille finds difficult to handle, and she hallucinates DI Richard Poole who was murdered on the island.
Skip Marsden is found with his dinghy on a beach with a harpoon in his chest 11 miles from where his boat was moored at sea by a buoy with four well-to-do drunken stag party members, one a spoiled young viscount soon to be married, on board. Parker and the team have to determine how Marsden ended up on the beach when his dinghy was inoperable and GPS confirmed his boat had never moved. Another problem was Marsden had dog hairs in his throat from his dog that had died two months previously. The discovery that Marsden was a drug smuggler using the fixed buoy as a drug drop complicated the crime further and a fifth person was interested in the whereabouts of the drugs.
Emmet Peterson staggers into the police station wearing a bloodstained shirt, carrying a pistol and believing that he has shot dead his best friend, businesswoman, Gardenia Dujon. Parker has his doubts after finding a crayon at the scene of the crime. Delving into Dujon's past leads to the death of her young son 15 years previously and also to blackmailer, Tarone Vincent, that her paranoid husband and 21 year old daughter only knew as a former employee. Blue varnish on the finger guard of the pistol and pictures taken at the crime scene give Parker the answer. Sergeant Hooper accepts a promotion, but a cloud hangs over the team when Trainee Officer Pryce is provoked into assaulting Vincent. Catherine prods Parker to take action regarding his feelings for Florence.
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