So, many years ago, when we were still in-office (so, I guess, 2019), Dwyer Murphy and I joked about putting together a list of the best fake crime novels in film and TV. You know, you’ll be watching a show and one of the characters will be a writer, and they’ll be writing a book. And sometimes that book is a mystery. We wanted to write a piece assembling and showcasing those fake books.
A while back, I put together this ranking about the best fake detective and crime movies IN TV in movies and TV, and even before that, I put together this list of the best novelist-detective characters in movies and TV. And, later, Hector DeJean also wrote a fantastic roundup on TV murder mystery episodes and fictional mystery authors in those programs. So it’s about time I complete my trifecta and publish this companion article!
Now, this is not a complete list… just the ones that stuck in my mind the most. There are other fake novels I wish we could include, like the crime novels written by Jaime (Colin Firth) in Love Actually that blow away into that swampy lake on the property of the house he’s renting, near Marseille. But we don’t even know the title of that (or his others). I wish I knew anything more about Kafka’s Motorbike (the novel the publishing house where Bridget Jones works is putting out, in Bridget Jones’s Diary), aside from that it’s been given the blurb “the greatest book of our time.” Is there a way that the erotic-novel-to-end-all-erotic-novels that Jimmy Shive-Overly (Chris Geere) is attempting to write in the FX series You’re the Worst might have a crime element in it, enough to qualify it for this list? We’ll never know. But these eight (listed below) are some of the ones we DO know.
Oh, one more thing… how are they listed? Is there an order, a ranking? Kind of? Look, it’s VERY hard to judge the quality of books when you only have their covers, transmitted to us via screen, beautifully designed by the prop departments and impossible to literally read.
www.cwtvpr.com via The New York Times
8. Snow Falling by Jane Villanueva, Jane the Virgin
Snow Falling, the historical romance-crime novel that our eponymous protagonist of Jane the Virgin is writing based on her own crazy life, seems less good than the show about her crazy life. I have to be honest: the title alone is a bit of a letdown. The gerund makes the title feel incomplete. But whatever, the show is amazing and the point of this book in the overall narrative is that it is a starting point for Jane’s writerly career.
7. Dismembers Only by Simon Hastings, Modern Family
Sadly, we don’t get a taste of the prose written by Simon Hastings, the most famous contemporary mystery author in the world of Modern Family, but we do get to hear the titles of the first two mysteries in the trilogy he’s working on: Dismembers Only, and A Death of Fresh Air! And we get to learn the title that Phil has named his piece of Hastings-fan fiction: Open House, Closed Casket. When Phil and Cam run into him on a train (where he’s typing out the new draft for his third novel, Locomotive for Murder, on a typewriter), he even lets them read a few pages.
6. Heat Wave by Richard Castle, Castle
You can read “Richard Castle”‘s books in real life, but they’re still exist (and were created) within the reality inside a TV series, so I’m putting them on this list. In the show, Nathan Fillion’s charasmatic author Rick Castle is the author of many novels, including the Derek Storm books and the Nikki Heat series, the latter of which he begins while he’s who becomes a consultant with the NYPD when a serial killer starts murdering people in ways that imitate the murders in Castle’s books. His goofy playing-fast-and-loose-ish-ness annoys his straight-laced new partner, detective Kate Beckett (Stana Katic), but (big surprise) they turn out to be an indomitable team, and Castle starts getting ideas for the books starring a Beckett-esque character, and somehow, the NYPD brings him on as a consultant full-time, afterwards. Heat Wave is the first in this series.
5. Murder at the Stratley by Dick Loudon, Newhart
Bob Newhart’s character in Newhart spends much of the show toiling away on a mystery novel and being interrupted by nonsense at his hotel. But in episode 21 of season 7, which is a very meta episode, he finally publishes it, and it becomes clear that he has taken great inspiration from the people in his own life. (But hopefully not too much inspiration, because the wife in that novel is murdered.) A classic episode.
4. The Dark Hallway by Beth Mitchell, You Hurt My Feelings
I don’t really know what The Dark Hallway, the follow-up novel Julia Louis-Dreyfuss’s Beth Mitchell is working on in Nicole Holofcener’s You Hurt My Feelings, is about. But the cover is extremely crimey!! It’s got a pair of eyes looking out of a ripped sheet of paper. So I think it qualifies? Right? The point of the movie isn’t really what the book is about, but the strange small controversy that arises from its existence. You Hurt My Feelings is about the small lies we tell our loved ones as part of everyday life; it follows Beth Mitchell, the author of a successful memoir called I Had to Tell It, who has been unable to produce a second book. She teaches fiction at the New School and slowly toils away on a follow-up book. When she finally gives her husband (Tobias Menzies) her draft to read, he tells her that he loves it. But then, she overhears him telling a friend that he doesn’t like it, and he’s not sure how to tell her, or if he even should. Obviously this causes problems. In a way, the plot of the movie is the greater of the two thrillers.
3. This Little Piggy by Harlan Thrombey, Knives Out
I want to read all of the books written by Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer), the mystery writer whose death is at the center (and the beginning) of Knives Out, but the Ten Little Indians/Along Came a Spider sounding title of This Little Piggy especially cracks me up, so I want to read that the most. Based on the glimpses of his “by me” bookshelf, his oeuvre looks like a cross between Agatha Christie’s and (early) James Patterson’s. Apparently, his novels are also very good… when Noah Segan’s affable policeman Trooper Wagner is chatting with some of Thrombey’s surviving family, he brings up just how good. “Big fan. I’m a big fan. I mean, his plots are just like.. Like I won’t spoil it for you. But, okay, like A Thousand Knives, the cow and the shotgun. Like where do you come up with that?” So, yeah… I’d like to read these. Also there’s a book on the shelf called “Homunculus”!!! What the heck do you think that’s about?????
2. The Pepperwood Chronicles by Nick Miller, New Girl
Pepper-heads know what I’m talking about before I even begin, but I’m going to say my spiel for the rest of you. The hardboiled novel that Nick Miller (Jake Johnson) is writing in New Girl (that winds up becomes a bestseller among tween girls) is something that all of us at CrimeReads would pay great money to read. It sounds like perfect chaos. It’s dedicated to the Chicago Cubs, JFK is alive, and its prose sounds like this: “The sun baked down on Pepperwood’s back as he moved over to the St. Charles streetcar. The driver handed him a brown paper sack. Without opening it, Pepperwood knew what was inside: blood-soaked beignets.” Tell me you wouldn’t buy this book the day it came out.
1. The Corpse Danced at Midnight by J. B. Fletcher, Murder She Wrote
The one that started it all!! At least in terms of reckoning with the death toll of Cabot Cove, Maine.
