Welcome, again, to the Caribbean island of Saint Marie and the Honore police department. The rumpled, clumsy and brilliant DCI Humphrey Goodin leads the team. Sergeant Fidel Best has already left (since Season 3) to take a job on the island of St. Lucia. Goodin's other sergeant, Camille Bordey, will break everybody's hearts by leaving in the 4th episode of Season 4. I thought they did a very good job with story-arc of Camille's decision to leave. I thoroughly enjoyed Season 4. These are well-crafted mysteries. Red herrings. Impossible crimes. It's not just fun viewing, it's good viewing. It's puzzling viewing. And there is a lot of comedy, too. It may take a while to get used to new people, but it works for me. The 8 episodes of Season 4 of "Death in Paradise" originally aired January/February 2015. All together, they total a wonderful 472 minutes of mystery viewing. That's a lot of minutes compared to some series. If you buy the DVD set, the episodes are presented in 16:9 anamorphic and stereo. English subtitles are available for all episodes. There are no bonus extras on the DVDs. I would love to hear more about the music used in the program. The TV show as aired, and on the DVDs, has no episode titles. Episode One Tonight is Saint Marie's Fete Mouri. As Camille tells Humphrey, "It's the Voodoo festival of the dead, when we summon any spirits still trapped on earth and command them to move on to the afterlife." It may be the perfect night for a séance, and Elias Thomson, owner of the Thomson Rum Distillery, holds one at his house. He wants to expand the distillery, which means tearing down some old buildings. One of those, the old barrel store house, is said to be haunted by a woman who was killed there in the 1850's. His workers refuse to go into it, much less tear it down, unless the murdered woman's spirit, Mama Beth, is exorcised. A closed room, five people holding hands around the table, curtain drawn on the only window. Then the candle is blown out and Elias is stabbed with a very real knife. As no one let go of anybody's hand, it can only be the work of the vengeful Mama Beth. Right? Episode Two Jake Peters, former pro surfer, now runs the Sandy Cove Surf School with his wife. He's in his shed, working on a surfboard when his best friend, Dr. Karl Slater, arrives for poker night. That's why Karl is on hand to break down the locked door of the shed after everybody hears a shot. There's Jake, lying on the floor, dead of a close-range gunshot wound. But there's no weapon with him, and no way to get in and out of the locked shed. This is that mystery classic, the Locked Room Mystery! Episode Three On a sandy beach, the Saint Marie Heritage Society is practicing their reenactment for tomorrow's anniversary. For 461 years before, the first French explorers landed on Saint Marie. They go so far in their verisimilitude that they forage among the plants to make an authentic stew. Unfortunately, they all get food poisoning, and one, Francis Davison even dies from it. It would be ruled a tragic accident except that Davison had called Goodin an hour before to say, "Somebody is out to get me." Episode Four At the swanky Dolore Sands Hotel, Jenny and her three bridesmaids are on the last day of her "hen party" - five days of partying without the guys before she ties the knot with Simon. At the end of the day, Jenny heads up to her room for a bath, the water strewn with flower petals. She never makes it out of the tub and they find her the next morning drowned. And it seems another impossible crime. (The only part I dislike about this episode are the terms "hen party" and "the hens".) Episode Five Sergeant Florence Cassell is promoted out of uniform. Now she's Detective Sergeant and can wear shorts and her hair down. She isn't Camille, but I think she does a good job as Goodin's foil. Taking her place as Sergeant is TJ Hooper - he's the sober-sided counterpart to Constable Dwayne Myers. The new team has to jump right in, with a celebrity murder. Twenty years ago, the UK band "Flowers of Progress" had one hit album and then dissolved. Cheryl Moore, the band manager, brings them back to Saint Marie to record a new album at the same studio where they put together the first. There's a surfeit of suspects when one of the band turns up dead. As Goodin says, "Stevie Smith, habitual wild child and lead singer. Lived life on the edge. And died the ultimate rock 'n' roll death, electrocuted in a swimming pool." Episode Six Tomorrow is the hotly contested final of the 2015 Inter-Island Beach Volleyball Championship. Team Saint Marie will battle their fiercest rival, Team Isla Jonas. Both teams arrive at the practice volleyball beach. But Isla Jonas' best player isn't there. They find out why when a teammate finds her dead body at the back of the team jeep. Family dynamics are important in this episode. "Literary inaccuracies aside, we all create our own Frankensteins." Episode Seven Bill Williams runs outdoor team bonding experiences for corporations. This week he has a group lead by Annette Burgess, CEO of an online travel agency. When she's found dead of a bullet wound, Constable Dwayne Myers spends a lot of time trying to get her hotel room safe open. When he does, all they find is an envelope holding an unused roll of scotch tape. Why would she lock that up? And why would that get her killed? Episode Eight Humphrey's 71 year-old father is coming to visit, which sets the detective all in a tizzy. For good reason, when, for example, his dad urges Humphrey to "put an end to this protracted and, frankly, quite ridiculous, gap year," and come home to England. But in the meanwhile, there's a job to do. Jack Harmer was in a courthouse holding cell when someone managed to shoot him. The Commissioner puts on just a little pressure to find out who killed a man in police custody. If, by any chance, you haven't seen the first three seasons of "Death in Paradise" yet, you're missing a treat: Death in Paradise Season 1 Death in Paradise Season 2 I like them all, but this is my favorite season. Death in Paradise Season 3 Season 5 is being filmed and will air in 2016. Yippee! Happy Reader