“I don’t want to alarm you but something very sinister is going on here.”—Jessica Fletcher
So far as Murder, She Wrote is concerned, something sinister has been going on for all of thirty-five years now. A Time for Murder marks the 50th title in the iconic book series based on the fabulously successful television show.
Where does Murder, She Wrote fit into the canon of classic mystery series over the years?
Let’s start with the fact that the show can justifiably lay claim to being one of the most successful mystery series of all time. The TV producers who conceived the idea of a widowed mystery writer-turned-sleuth originally wanted Jean Stapleton, who won three Emmys for her portrayal of Edith Bunker on All in the Family, to play Jessica Fletcher. When she turned them down, they opted for Angela Lansbury instead, and the icon of Jessica Fletcher was born.
We’ll never know if Murder, She Wrote would have similarly thrived with Stapleton or someone else in that role. But from the time of the show’s 1984 debut with a ninety-minute pilot entitled “The Murder of Sherlock Holmes,” it was a hit. It ran for twelve seasons on CBS, finishing among the top fifteen rated shows on the air for its first eleven years, eight of those in the top ten, slumping only in its final season when the network inexplicably moved it from its cherished Sunday night slot to Thursday, going up against NBC’s “Must See TV” night.
The book series spawned by the TV show’s success debuted with Gin and Daggers in 1989. The next book didn’t appear until 1994, after which two or more titles have been released every year since with a single exception. Television reruns, meanwhile, continue to appear on the Hallmark Channel, often with multiple nightly episodes.
“It’s important to me to pursue those who cross the line, and take another human life. In my investigating murders, I’ve seen some terrible things. So many of them it would take the wind out of anybody’s sails.”—Jessica Fletcher
The enduring appeal of Murder, She Wrote is unprecedented in pop culture annals. It managed to carve out a niche just at the time cable television was breaking onto the scene and far more viewing options were becoming available. And I can’t tell you how many people I’ve heard from who recall watching the show with their parents or grandparents and plenty still do just that, sometimes binge-watching entire seasons that are now available on Amazon. The Murder, She Wrote books, meanwhile, have sold millions of copies and show no signs of slowing.
The basis for that starts with Jessica herself. She’s a woman defined by her independence, having carved out a fabulously successful career for herself as a mystery writer after her husband’s death. She lives alone, travels alone, while being relentless in her pursuit of justice. She’s her own provider, though she’s generous to a T and always stands ready with a cup of tea when someone stops by for a chat.
She’s the person you’d want to move in next door, the person we’d invite to Thanksgiving dinner, or welcome into our homes every Sunday night at eight o’clock for eleven years. Though romances were teased at times on both the show and, later, in the books, nothing ever came to fruition, whether it be with her publisher played by Arthur Hill on TV (who she ultimately exposed as a murderer) or Chief Inspector George Sutherland of Scotland Yard in the books.
Of all the sleuths who dominated the airwaves back then, Jessica Fletcher was the only woman, going about her business with a keyboard and keen eye instead of a snub-nosed revolver. Viewers saw in her something they’d seldom seen before and that made them love her, just as it did with the books the TV series spawned.
“That’s the puzzle. Those who were inside didn’t have motives and those with motives couldn’t get inside.”—Jessica Fletcher
Then there’s the writing. The show was created by Richard Levinson and William Link, who were also responsible for another enduring, iconic detective in Peter Falk’s Columbo. By and large, those twenty-plus episodes of Murder, She Wrote every season were tight, twisty, beautifully conceived puzzles. And every week we’d watch as Jessica fit all the disparate pieces together, leading toward the denouement when she’d reveal the final one that enabled her to solve the crime. The formula seldom waivered and turning on the TV on Sunday nights was like inviting an old friend into your home on a weekly basis. We did the same thing with Ben Cartwright for years and Perry Mason too.
Which brings us to the factor that distinguishes Murder, She Wrote from the rest of the pack and solidified its iconic status. Thanks to Jessica Fletcher, the series brought mystery off the slick, gritty streets and into the kitchen, the living room, and small-town America as defined by the village of Cabot Cove itself.
“I’ve been here one year, this is my fifth murder. What is this, the death capitol of Maine? On a per capita basis this place makes the south Bronx look like Sunny Brooke farms!”—Sheriff Mort Metzger
When you consider the enduring popularity of Murder, She Wrote, and where the series fits in among its contemporaries and forebears, that’s where the discussion starts. Because the number one ingredient the books and television show have in common is the cast of characters who surround Jessica Fletcher in her everyday life; from Dr. Seth Hazlitt, to Sheriff Mort Metzger (and Amos Tupper before him!), to Harry MaGraw, to Artie Gelber, and many more. Robert Parker’s Spenser, of course, had Hawk and Susan Silverman. John D. MacDonald’s Travis Magee had Meyer. But none of those series, or any other for that matter, had a bucolic, down-home setting like Cabot Cove.
Spenser owned Boston the way Philip Marlowe owned Los Angeles. Travis Magee lived on a houseboat named the Busted Flush that he won in a card game. But Cabot Cove stands alone and unrivalled as the kind of cozy place where nothing bad ever should happen, but always seems to.
There were 264 episodes of the television series to go with those fifty books now. After I took over writing the book series, I thought it would be fun to give it a bit of a reboot in terms of timing and technology. I didn’t want to leave Jessica stranded in an unchanged past, so my writing evoked Murder, She Wrote updated to the current day with Uber, iPhones, text messages and a Cabot Cove newly besieged by tourists. But the essence of her character remained the same; she may compose her novels on the latest Mac, but she still does her research at the Cabot Cove Library where she serves as president of the Friends group.
Which brings me to A Time for Murder. It’s natural for a writer to want to put their own stamp on a series, no matter how iconic. So after my first three efforts, I asked myself what could I do that no one had ever done before? What about meeting a younger Jessica Fletcher for the first time? A Jessica still married to very much alive husband Frank, raising her nephew Grady, and serving as a substitute English teacher at a Maine high school while trying to get published twenty-five years in the past. What if a murder happened at that high school and Jessica was drawn in, finding that she not only has a knack for solving crime, but also for writing mysteries?
And so A Time for Murder was born. I had an absolute blast reverse-engineering the back story presented and/or hinted at in the long-running television show. And here’s hoping you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
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