Sydney, 1965: After a chance encounter with a stranger, mild-mannered tea lady Hazel Bates becomes an accidental sleuth, stumbling into a world of ruthless crooks and racketeers in search of a young woman she believes to be in danger. In the meantime, Hazel's job at Empire Fashionwear is in jeopardy. The firm has turned out the same frocks and blouses for the past twenty years and when the mini-skirt bursts onto the scene, it rocks the rag trade to its foundations. War breaks out between departments and it falls to Hazel, the quiet diplomat, to broker peace and save the firm.

In their youth, lovebirds Elizabeth and Ray had to fight to be together. Their future was full of promise and, blessed with children and careers, their happiness complete. But a twist of fate changed their lives forever. Now in her 60s, Elizabeth is desperately lonely. She rarely sees her two adult sons and her closest friend is a talkative budgie. But when her grandson, Zach, gets into trouble with the police, she decides to take him on a road trip to find his grandfather, her lost love Ray, in the hope of mending their broken family.

Fiona, Sue, and Daisy, three retired ladies who volunteer at the local charity shop, Dogs Need Nice Homes, can’t believe their favorite customer is dead. Eighty-six-year-old Sarah Brown was found murdered in her hallway by her delivery man, a domino clutched in her hand—with a name scratched on it. When another person is found dead with a domino in their hand, and with the police making no progress, the ladies will need to help unmask a serial killer. At least they have Fiona’s scruffy-haired terrier cross to assist them.

Mia and Ben, an Australian couple in their early 30s, have relinquished one dream and embraced another, selling their Sydney flat and purchasing an old yellow house in the picturesque village of Cordes-sur-Ciel in southwest France. They soon meet sophisticated neighbours Dominic and Susannah, a British couple in their 60s who welcome them warmly but whose own relationship is in crisis. Mia and Ben are immediately starstruck and impressed by their lavish hospitality. However, things with Dominic and Susannah are not what they first seem. 

Iris Turner, an unworldly young Englishwoman, arrives in the French Riviera to take up a secretarial role for the mysterious Hammond Brooke. Living in a small, exclusive hotel among eccentric and unpredictable aristocrats and struggling to gain her employer's trust, she soon realises that nothing is as it seems. Initiated into the mysterious world of perfume, she finds herself entangled in a web of intrigue and deception.