The incorrigible, Detective Inspector Richard Poole is back. We last met him in the sublime "A Meditation on murder" He is also the star of the TV show Death in paradise, the book is based on the characters from the same show, written by the sane author.Plot Summary: Polly Carter is a world famous super model. She is currently staying in Saint Marie with her twin sister, Claire, who is disabled and uses a wheelchair to move about. On one fine morning Claire wakes up to find her famous sister sitting in the drawing room and smoking. Claire and Polly never had a cordial relationship, but on that morning Polly looked distinctly perturbed with Claire. Polly ignoring Claire's caretaker Sophie, pushes her to the outside lawn to have a word with her invalid sister.
Soon, Sophie witnesses an argument between the two sisters. She watches Polly pushing Claire from the lawn towards the cliff. Sophie runs after them, when she reaches the end of the cliff, she sees Claire a little distance away from the edge of the cliff still ensconced in her wheel chair, but Polly is missing! She walks towards the edge of the cliff and sees Polly lying dead on the floor below. Polly has committed suicide.
That is the only logical conclusion. No one else was on the cliff, Claire is paralyzed from waist down she could not have pushed her sister. So, it could only have been a suicide, but then what is Richard Poole doing investigating a suicide? Poole is sure this was a murder but he has three problems. Who did it and how? and the bigger problem of his mother visiting him on Saint Marie.
