User Reviews

As told numerous times before, the eighth season of "Death in Paradise" has not been very good at all. The first three entries of this season were painfully average to be frank. "Frappe Death Day" is fortunately a quite good episode. It's not one of the series' best, but is still solid enough.

Let's start with good aspects, shall we?

. The production values of this episode are great as usual. "Frappe Death Day" is beautifully shot and sounds wonderful too. The acting's strong all around. Shyko Amos is becoming less annoying as Ruby, Susy Kane is very good as the victims wife, but Anna Chancellor gives one of the best guest star performances I have ever seen on this show.

. The murder mystery is very compelling here with mostly clever twists, turns. The humor of this episode is not as absurd as it has been lately too.

But...

. I did not find the ending twist( Ciss turned out to be the killer after all) very surprising. To be honest, once the story started to show itself , it was not that hard to figure it out. The motive for the murder I found quite obvious as well. In matter of fact, it felt that some parts of the story of his episode had been previously done in other entries of the show and those previous times executed them much better.

. There are also times, when the writing is not as realistic as the writer probably wanted it to be. I'm not a gun expert, but it did not take much guesswork to figure out: a book, which covered the revolver, cannot silence the gunshot whatever the circumstances are. Also, why in the world would the murderer put the book, which was used in murder, back to its proper place. It's going to be found sooner or later, right?

Overall, not very realistic, but still a good one.

7/10 HK

We love the series; just remember to stop thinking while you watch it.

The moron that wrote this episode has clearly never fired a revolver! First, holding a book up to the barrel isn't going to silence the gunshot at all. In fact, it's extremely dangerous and could result in a burst barrel. Holding the book as shown in the show, would put your hand in front of the cylinder gap of the gun. This will result in severe burns from the gasses leaking out between the cylinder and barrel.

We love the characters; the writers, not so much. Just too many plot holes and seldom any real evidence. In most episodes, if the culprit would just shut up and hire a decent lawyer, they'd go free.

In this 4th episode of the 8th season of Death in Paradise, a book without a bookmark is a major clue in this case. The ending was a bit unexpected, especially with the theme of LGBTI rights. Still, theories abound in this episode, with multiple suspects galore as always.

One thing that intrigues me is you never see the officers taking the mug shots of the suspects that are placed on the whiteboard.

Jack arrives at the murder scene with the dead guy already out of the pool, no one briefs him, but he immediately knows where the guy had stood when shot. He had NO basis for knowing that. The bullet being in a planter, on top surface, on other side of pool shows no understanding of ballistics. AND the story verifies this because the bullet they'd found, based upon his brilliance, hadn't gotten there from the fatal shot, but from another shot later. -- The Great and Awesome discovery that a bookmark was missing suggests brilliance, but it's this minutia amongst the lack of more obvious things that reeks of bad writing. -- "Does that water look funny to you? It's got a greenish hue." That should be no surprise since someone had just bled out in there a few days before, changing the water chemistry, probably causing algae to grow. -- Ruby glances at a wet wig inside a plastic bag and knows it's a human hair wig. I find it far too hard to believe that it's that easy. -- They find ONE bookmark in the study and stop searching. They don't Yet show us that it had a bullet hole. I sat here shouting, "There could be several other books on the shelf with a bookmarker." And after the killer hid the robe and wig, why would she possibly put a book with a bullet hole back in the library? -- The bullet's exit hole in the book is clearly the size of .22 or .25 caliber. Both very weak rounds of ammo. What they'd found in the planter was clearly a larger bullet. The image of the gun, at the 44:32-minute point, is far too large a caliber to have made the tiny hole through the book. -- Firing a gun into a hard book would be a poor silencer since the expanding gasses would've leaked between the muzzle and the book. On the other hand, a pillow would've been better. -- One shot is powerful enough to go through a thick book and a man, but the next shot isn't strong enough to sink into the dirt of the planter. -- Ruby used to work at a photo processing lab and knows people there. They can supposedly analyze the photo. Photo analysis involves a lot more than just zooming in on an image. Jack should certainly have police lab contacts who can do it right. The zoomed-in photo could not have delivered such clarity from a photo. It's extremely rare for any security camera to have much clarity at all. SOME do, but the zoomed image would have to be taken from the system's internal capability, not from a photo of a wide-angle shot. -- Why didn't the writer have someone say Ciss wore a blond wig over her dark hair when she bought the wig that looked like her own hair. The wig salesperson would've wondered and remembered THAT oddity more than "someone who wore sunglasses." Why did it have to be an expensive human hair wig, which made the case easier to solve? -- Jack had been illegally gambling, but makes it legal by moving the operation to his house. Then we see the commissioner clearly covered-up his niece's criminal record--destroying the record. That's supposed to make us feel better. Unfortunately, I have to call it a criminal act. What other crimes are they covering-up? -- Ruby has always excessively been the literary fool. Someone to make us laugh, but the writers have made her far too much like a slap-stick comedy character. I've grown familiar with British comedy and Ruby doesn't fit it at all.