Although reading like the title of a murder mystery, this paper questions ideas about holiday-makers and travellers trying to escape from everyday life and its 'inauthenticity'. Views that the beach is a place where human bodies can find escape from inauthenticity are examined and found to contain many gendered and cultural assumptions. In parallel with 'flaneur' and 'flaneuse', the terms 'plageur' and 'plageuse' are coined to suggest the significance of gender and sexualities in a consideration of 'the body on the beach'.