Guest Post - Jon Land and Jessica Fletcheer

Murder She Wrote dominated television ratings from 1984 to 1996 and continues in reruns around the world.  But when the show ended, the books continued Jessica Fletcher's legacy in print.  Donald Bain began (as the co-author with Jessica Fletcher *wink-wink*) writing the series in 1989 until he passed away in 2017. 

After Donald Bain's passing, author Jon Land was approached to take over the series as he was working on completing Bain's A Date with Murder (47th book in the series) anyway. Land agreed to continue the series.  Please welcome Jon Land as the secret guest author today.

THINGS YOU MAY NOT KNOW ABOUT JESSICA

FLETCHER

The publication of MURDER IN RED marks the 35th anniversary of the eternal Murder, She Wrote series which debuted on CBS in 1984. But did you know that Angela Lansbury wasn’t the first choice to play Jessica Fletcher? It was actually Jean Stapleton, who’d fabulously played Edith Bunker on All in the Family. With that in mind, and to celebrate MURDER IN RED, let’s take a look at some other things you might not know about Jessica Fletcher.

§ Speaking of Angela Lansbury, the fact that Jessica never got her driver’s license mirrors the fact that Angela who never got hers either.

§ Jessica was president of her Delta Alpha Chi sorority at Harrison College in Green Falls, New Hampshire where she majored in journalism.

§ Jessica first met her future husband when they were both volunteering for a production at the esteemed Appleton Theater. But Jessica was so bad at set building, she never volunteered again.

§ When her husband Frank was still alive, and they were raising their nephew Grady, Jessica was a substitute English teacher at Appleton High School.

§ The death of the Appleton High principal became the first murder Jessica ever solved.

§ On that investigation, she worked with Amos Tupper, then Appleton’s only detective who’d go on to become sheriff at Cabot Cove.

§ Jessica and Frank purchased their beloved home in Cabot Cove from real estate agent Eve Simpson who would go on to become a close friend of Jessica’s. The night Eve showed them the house at 698 Candlewood Lane also marked the first time Jessica ever met Dr. Seth Hazlitt.

§ Upon moving to Cabot Cove, Jessica got a job teaching English full time and went on to mentor any number of writers who came back for visits during the television show’s twelve-year run.

§ Writing as J. B. Fletcher, Jessica has published over 40 books from The Corpse Danced at Midnight to The Corpse Danced Alone.

§ She celebrated publication of The Corpse Danced at Midnight at a costume party put on by her publisher Preston Giles in the pilot for the series during which, of course, someone is murdered and Jessica ends up cracking the case. (The episode was called The Murder of Sherlock Holmes).

§ The books gave Jessica a romantic interest in Chief Inspector George Sutherland of Scotland Yard, who’s introduced in the very first book in the series, Gin and Daggers. But the closest she ever came to a love interest in the TV series was Preston Giles, a flirtation that lasted only until Jessica revealed him as the killer in the same episode. In a subsequent episode years later, Giles is murdered himself. (Sutherland returns in Murder in Red!)

§ Jessica left Cabot Cove for a time to teach criminology at New York’s Manhattan University where she lives in Manhattan at the Penfield House Apartments, 941 West 61st St. She ultimately gave up the position because she missed Cabot Cove too much.

§ The Murder, She Wrote series boasts more books than either Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes (4 novels and 56 short stories) or Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot (45 novels).

§ Speaking of Agatha Christie, Angela Lansbury also played her famed sleuth Jane Marple in the 1980 film The Mirror Cracked.

SPOILER ALERT! A number of the factoids above are drawn from A Time for Murder, #50 in the Murder, She Wrote series that will be published this coming November and will introduce Jessica as a younger woman, twenty-five years in the past, for the first time ever in books or television!

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I don't know about you, but I still watch an episode occasionally.  This was great information and fun to get back into the Murder She Wrote world.  

Here is an episode to watch...staring a very young George Clooney!  So many stars were on the show.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8k1kbODS5s