When a British policeman is found murdered in a locked room on the tiny paradise island of Sainte-Marie, Detective Inspector Richard Poole is sent to investigate. He's the perfect man to solve the case. Unfortunately for Richard, he hates sun, sea and sand...

As DI Richard Poole desperately searches for a decent cup of tea, a bride is murdered on her wedding day. It is a tragedy DS Camille Bordey cannot help but notice, whilst Richard is more interested in housekeeping signs... But who would kill a bride on her wedding day? Could it really be one of her family?

Dwayne thinks he has seen a ghost after the team goes to a local school to deal with the murder of Angelique Morel. The previous night Angelique had predicted her own murder by a scarred man. Angelique was a local voodoo priestess, but Richard finds it hard to understand his team's belief that her prediction must have become a reality. Richard believes that it has nothing to do with voodoo and that cyanide poisoning is responsible.

Holiday-maker Megan Talbot confesses to shooting dead her husband, but puzzlingly there isn't a body - and without a victim, Richard has little to go on, insisting nothing is definite without hard evidence. But then a local boat crew fish a corpse out of the sea, with two gunshot wounds to the head - just as Megan said.

Escorting a convicted fraudster on the ferry back to Saint Marie goes disastrously wrong when the man is stabbed to death while handcuffed to DI Poole much to his embarrassment, the wrath of the commissioner and the amusement of his team and with a myriad of suspects an impossible case to solve despite unwanted help from an amateur sleuth.

When DI Poole is bedridden with a tropical fever and Camille is on a course in Paris, Dwayne and Fidel have to solve the murder of a local diver. The commissioner puts in charge Det Sgt Angela Young, who is holidaying on the island, and whose eccentric behaviour is more annoying than Poole's. Dwayne and Fidel go behind her back supplying case details to DI Poole who is being looked after by Camile's mother and her chicken soup - but can an ill DI Poole solve the case?

Richard sees the dark side of show business when a comeback concert ends in the most public of murders. If sun, sea and sand were not bad enough, he now has to conquer his fear of snakes to find the elusive killer.

A woman is found murdered in her bed with thirty coins in her mouth, and Dwayne's police shield under the bed initially makes him a suspect. On investigation, the woman was found to be living under a false name and under protection, as an informant, of London's Serious Organised Crime Agency, who have a man on the island. Poole believes the killer is still on the island looking for incriminating documents the woman had. Events and people conspire to prevent Poole returning to his old job in London.