"Death in Paradise," though not without gun play, is fairly subdued. Chief Stone is perhaps more pensive than usual--and certainly more soulful. Jesse seems depressed and saddened by a wider culture that diminishes and sexualizes young girls, by a father who turns away his own daughters, and by a wife batterer--all in his little town of Paradise. To compound this, his own losses seem to come to the fore, making felt visits to the gruff, thought-provoking Dr. Dix mandatory.
Perhaps, these are what underpin Jesse's unusual dreams, visions, and personal incidentals that seem to put him in direct contact with the local murder victim, Billie Bishop, an upper-income youth who suddenly switches from brilliant student to drugs, indiscriminate sex, and dropout status. Hers is the tragic story of so many runaway girls. And Jesse has another connection to Billie: they arrived in Paradise, a very unlikely place for both, at about the same time, and both were over-qualified and undoubtedly viewed somewhat suspiciously by the locals.
So the childless, wife-less, career-less, college-less, mother-less Chief Stone will not rest until Billie's murderer/user is apprehended. That this man turns out to be two separate men, one a pederast and the other a cold killer, means not only that Stone's perfect cop-ly intuition is, in part, mistaken, but that his justice work for Billie is suddenly jeopardized. But wedded to his sympathetic stand with Billie, a solution must out. And in short order, the confounding knot from the crime scene turns out to be the knot that ties up his murder case. His case closed, Jesse is shown attending Billie Bishop's solitary grave, as he had done the same for his close woman friend, Abigail Taylor, in an opening scene. And at the fade out, Jesse is at the bedside of his comatose sidekick Luther (who has been shot by the wife batterer in the sub-plot) reading to him the bio of their baseball hero, Suitcase Simpson. A bluesy installment indeed, this "Death in Paradise."
