Whitstable Pearl

An ex-soldier is believed to have kidnapped his son while visiting France, where the boy lives with his mother. Pearl and Mike team up to try and find the missing boy.

Mike has broken his ankle and, laid up at home, begins to be disturbed by a man in a flat opposite who has violent night terrors. Mike becomes convinced that the night terrors are a cover for him planning to murder his wife. The police find no evidence to support this, so Mike hires Pearl to investigate further. She discovers a body, but it's not the person she and Mike were expecting.

After inheriting a beloved local pub from her mother, Molly Stratton puts it up for sale to the highest bidder, rather than selling it back to the community. She turns to Pearl for help to deal with the anonymous threats she's been receiving - including a dead seagull on her doorstep. When the pub is sold, the situation takes an even darker turn.

When 1970s movie icon Zelda St John changes her will, leaving her fortune to her housekeeper, Natalia, the young woman seeks out Pearl, fearing that Zelda's family might hurt her. Not long afterward, Zelda is found unconscious at her home, attacked with a croquet mallet, and Natalia disappears. Clashing over who they believe is responsible, Mike and Pearl lead separate investigations.

Dolly notices unexplained things happening in her house: the shower being left on when she hasn't used it, money going missing and then reappearing, the radio tuned to the wrong station. Pearl fears her mother is showing early signs of Alzheimer's disease, but she hooks up security cameras to placate her. What they see on the footage leads to a surprising solution to the problem.

Pearl caters a wedding at a theme park, but the reception is marred by heated arguments and tensions among the guests - and that's before Pearl and Ruby discover the bride stabbed to death in the hall of mirrors. Mike suspects the groom, but Pearl has doubts. Worried for her welfare, Mike urges Pearl to stay out of it, but she can't resist investigating, even when it leads her straight into danger.