Death in Paradise: Episode 13.5 (Red Planet Pictures, BBC, Région Guadeloupe, Film Commission of Guadeloupe, 2024)

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2024 by Mark Gabrish Conlan for Zenger’s Newsmagazine • All rights reserved

On Friday, November 1 I watched the latest episode of Death in Paradise and then a quite good Live at the Belly Up episode featuring singer-songwriter Tim Flannery and his band, The Lunatic Fringe. The Death in Paradise episode, which as usual in the later stages of this show didn’t have a title (just a designation as episode five of season 13), deals with the murder of Ray Saunders (Guy Henry), a local criminal leader, and the two principal suspects: his hot-headed son Max (Mark Strepan) and Booker St. Jean (Kevin “KG” Garry), his second-in-command. Both Ray Saunders and his son Max are white; Booker St. Jean is Black, and as usual in this show the racial politics are interesting and don’t always follow as you’d expect them to. The lead detective is a white man, Inspector Neville Parker (Ralf Little), but he reports to a Black commissioner, Selwyn Patterson (Don Warrington), and just about all the other police officers on the (fictitious) Caribbean island of Saint-Marie (“played” by the very real island of Guadeloupe, though oddly in this episode the real Guadeloupe is name-checked as a place one of the suspects might have escaped to) are also Black. The challenge for Neville Parker is that of the two suspects, Max has no apparent reason to want his father dead but also no alibi, while Booker St. Jean is dripping with reasons to want the old guy dead but what seems like a rock-solid alibi: he was meeting with his probation officer between 6 and 6:30 p.m., when the police believe the murder took place. Eventually it turns out that they were both in on it, and they faked the time of the murder to make it look like it took place between 6 and 6:30 when it really happened at 7, after Booker’s meeting with his probation officer had finished. Ultimately Booker is arrested for murder and Max is arrested for fraud – or something like that, since I remember both of them being taken into custody but I can only dimly recollect who got busted for what. For its spectacular Caribbean scenery, its devil-may-care insouciance and the overall clash between the natural beauty and the sordid intrigues going on around it, Death in Paradise is an excellent show, but the writers (here there was only one, James Hall) aren’t always that great about tying up the loose ends in their plots.