Murder, She Wrote Books In Order
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Murder, She Wrote is a series of crime fiction and detective novels by Jessica Fletcher of Cabot Cove. She went to college at the Harrison College in Green Falls, New Hampshire, from where she graduated with a degree in journalism. After graduation, she decided to take up a job as a substitute English teacher. She interned at the Appleton Theater for a while and it was while she was working there that she met Frank Fletcher, a United States Air Force Captain that she went on to marry. They have no children of their own but they adopted Grady their nephew, who they raised as their won after his parents perished in an automobile accident. Following the death of her husband Frank, she wrote “The Corpse Danced At Midnight”, which her nephew found and showed to his girlfriend. She had it published by Coventry House who loved it so much that they published it, marking the start of Jessica’s career as an author. In the course of publishing, she would soon be drawn into the intrigues of a homicide that led her to quit Coventry House. During the intervening period, she published with other houses and did other things including serving in the US House of Representative for Maine. Seven years after the publication of the debut novel, she moved to New York where she went back to teaching Creative Writing and Criminology. While she has established herself as an internationally known sleuth, she still continues to publish novels.
The Murder, She Wrote series of novels by Jessica Fletcher was borne from a TV series by the same name that aired on the CBS Network between 1984 and 1996. Jessica Fletcher the author of the novels and lead character in the series was played by Angela Lansbury. The light-hearted series of novels are cozy mysteries set in Cabot Cove, where Jessica Fletcher the amateur sleuth goes about solving a range of homicides. Jessica is a widowed, childless and retired English teacher that became a successful writer of mystery novels. It all began with a small old Royal typewriter but over time and as she became more successful, she moved to a computer that runs on Windows 3.1. While she has amassed quite the fortune, she loves her small coastal community of Cabot Cove in Maine and never wants to leave. She has never let her success go to her head and has kept in touch with all her old friends that she has known since her teaching days. She counts among her friends multi-millionaires with private planes, as well as homeless people with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Nowadays she works as an amateur sleuth occupied in unraveling homicide cases in her small town. While she prefers to work as JB Fletcher both in her writing career and sleuthing work, she increasingly finds that her personal life and work often overlap.
In “Gin & Daggers” the first novel of the Murder, She Wrote Series, Jessica Fletcher is on her way to London. She is set to give the commencement speech at a function and while at it spend time with Marjorie Ainsworth. She happens to be one of the most popular mystery fiction authors in the world. But her friend is advanced in age and thinks that it is only a matter of time before she is dead. Marjorie decides to host a party while Jessica is in town. She invites her niece, some prominent personalities in the publishing industry as well as some questionable characters. Jessica was wary of some of the characters but since it was only for one night, she does not give it much thought. But then she wakes up on the morning after the party to find that her friend Marjorie had been killed in cold blood. She is the lead suspect in the homicide and given that her friend had been such a public and popular figure, she also has to deal with the circus of media coverage. To be cleared she needs to put all her sleuthing skills to work to track down the man that had set her up.
“Manhattans & Murder” the second novel of the series opens to Jessica Fletcher in New York, where she is launching her latest mystery novel. She has chosen the perfect time for a launch which is just before Christmas. She has been doing the rounds of the bookstores and has done signings as well as interviews with media houses such as the New York Times and CNN. But it is not long before she forgets all the glamor of being hosted by Donahue, Larry King, and Oprah Winfrey as she witnesses the murder of a charity Santa Claus. The dead man is Waldo Morse, a man she had known from Cabot Cove. He is gunned down near St Patrick’s Cathedral on New York’s busy Fifth Avenue. Jessica had not seen the man for more than a decade after he fled Cabot Cove and wonders if the drug dealer had gone into witness protection or something. Despite her commitments, she is soon trawling the seedier neighborhoods of New York determined to resolve the mystery of the homicide. She needs to find out why Waldo was killed and maybe just find the next story for her next murder mystery. But every time a new body is found, the media heat on Jessica is amplified.
In “Rum & Razors” the third novel of the Murder, She Wrote Series, Jessica is looking to reward herself from the exertions of writing her latest mystery novel. She has been invited by her friends in Cabot Cove Walter and Laurie Marschalk. The two own the Lovers Lagoon Inn, an island resort hotel and have been her friends for as long as she can remember. Upon staying with them for a few days, she realizes that her friends are facing competition from Diamond Reef the neighboring resort, and are also having financial and marital issues. A few days later while taking a night walk, Jessica discovers Walter’s body with the neck sliced open floating in the Lover’s Lagoon. True to form, she goes sleuthing but there are numerous suspects that she has to go through including a mistress or two, disgraced politicians, disgruntled investors, upset employees, rival hotel owners, and his wife Laurie. Her holiday just turned into a sleuthing adventure.
Today I will talk about a successful murder mystery of its time, a series that was written by Donald Bain and fictional female detective Jessica Fletcher. Donald Bain is the author or ghost author as they call him of more than 115 books, most of them were bestsellers. These consist of both fiction and non-fiction. The popular categories that his novels can be categorised are: murder mysteries, comedies, westerns, investigative journalism, business, psychology, historical dramatizations and food.
Now looking into a brief overview of how this series was born. Harvey Shepard, the CBS network (US television) executive approached William Link and Richard Levinson in 1984 about making a mystery series with a female lead role. Angela Lansbury who was secretly expressing her interest in a small screen series finally bagged the role. In April 1984 filming of the series started and the series came to life.
The novel series was born following the popularity of the television series that were aired from 1984 to 1996 over 264 episodes covering 12 seasons.
Donald Bain started writing this series for the TV show and have written all the above when he was writing approximately two each year. The setting for most of the books in this series saw the female detective Jessica Fletcher moving from her favourite location Cabot Cove to various locations all over the world to solve mystery cases. From London, Scotland, Provance, San Francisco, to the Carribbean, Manhatten, Las Vegas and New Orleans, Jessica travelled all over the globe via this series chasing her culprits.
Jessica was female detective and the spine of the mystery murder series :Murder, she wrote. Her ancestor’s belonged from Kilcleer, Ireland (Cork). Jessica had two brothers and two sisters. She was a widow and an English teacher (retired). This extremely talented detective lived at 698 Candlewood Lane in Cabot Cove, which is situated in Maine. Jessica and her late husband were not blessed with children but there is mention of nieces and nephews, cousins, in-laws and relatives in the series.
Jessica’s relationship with law enforcing officers was not always pleasant. They preferred her staying away from crime scenes. However her accurate judgement and deductions on the cases forced them to accept her role to resolve the mysteries were dragging quite a bit.
In some series readers felt that Jessica Fletcher’s personal life and her personal relationships were portrayed more than the actual mystery. On a popular site; the novel is given a rating of 3.5 – 3.7 stars. However there is a section of readers who are absolute loyal and dedicated fans of Jessica Fletcher and have read every single novel just for this love for the character.
The opening scenes of every novel is a clear inspiration of the TV series and closely follow the pattern of its beginning; build up, climax, resolution and ending. In every novel Jessica Fletcher is placed just before a murder waiting to happen or just after a crime. Her analytical sense always made her build up the puzzle bits together and reach to the resolution of every mystery.
The Signet Books, a subsidiary of The Penguine Group released this novel internationally and helped it become a household name.
The first series of the novel The Corpse Danced at Midnight was made into a TV film and later a successful theatre. The series also inspired video games for PC and Mac; board games and Dvds. This nerve wracking series has been popularised via Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus with over 114,000 likes and followers. Amazon and Barnes & Noble are the popular distributors of the book. Some followers of the series have pointed out in their reviews and discussion boards that some characters have changed massively from the TV series to the books. Viewers and readers kept the author under constant pressure of making sure that both settings marry up. I feel that since the TV series came in first, readers were automatically expecting a similar pattern in the books that followed.
Now talking briefly about few of the novels written in this series:
1) The Corpse Danced at Midnight : This is the first novel of the series. this was written just after the death of Jessica’s husband as a way to cope with her grief. It was published in late 1984. Jessica got inspiration to write this from a recent newspaper news. Artistic designer Andrew Probert made the illustrations of this book. This book was later made into a film. The murder weapon in this novel was poison and the pregnant ballerina was behind the horrific crime.
2) Murder comes to Maine: This book was later transformed in to a broadway play by the name ‘Mainly Murder’.
3) Ashes, Ashes, fall down to dead: This book was dedicated by Jessica to Mort Metzger and is a narrative version of autobiography of Mort’s brother while returning home from New York.
4) All the Murderers: This is another novel in the series that reached great heights of appreciation. The movie version of this novel was a big hit in the Milan film festival of 1992.
5) Yours’ Truly Damian Sinclair: This novel Jessica based on the life of her friend who was an ex- jewel thief by the name Damian Stanton.
6) The uncaught: This book created controversies with a man called David Novaro. He was accused of killing his own wife and when the book was released, he claimed that the book was written based on his story. More problems followed on when David Novaro himself was found dead.
7) Murder in White: This was another bestseller which was made into a play to debut at the famous West End , London.
8) The Launch Pad Murders: San Francisco’s Daily Union was meant to serialise this book.
9) A case of Half Murder: This was the last novel written in this phase of this series. This was being promoted in San Francisco when the US TV series that was a household name for more than 12 years came to an end.
However the novels did not stop at this. there were more series after this.
‘There’s just something that doesn’t seem right’; said Jessica in one of her novels and thus started another nerve wracking adventure involving crime and suspence
Book Series In Order » Characters »
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I have most of her books and dvd series.love the show and her.keep writing and please make some new shows
Excellent and so well written. I enjoy the audiobooks. Never stop writing the wonderful stories.
Murder she Wrote books are fantastic! I’ve read everyone of them and they are just like the tv shows. Please keep writing!
In which book does Jessica”s house burn? I’ve gotten behind.
Book 48 – Manuscript For Murder .
Love all the books by Jessica fletcher. Thank you keep writing. Gratefully joan