I'm happy to be joining #BerkleyMystery in celebrating the May 1 release of
MURDER SHE WROTE
A DATE WITH MURDER
Book 47 in the Murder She Wrote Mysteries
by Jessica Fletcher, Donald Bain & Jon Land
Jessica Fletcher investigates a friend's murder and a dangerous dating service in the latest entry in this USA Today bestselling series...
Jessica Fletcher takes up the case of her good friend Barbara "Babs" Wirth after Babs' husband Hal suffers a fatal heart attack that Jessica has reason to believe was actually murder. At the heart of her suspicions lies a sinister dating site Hal had used while he and Babs were having marital issues, a site that may be complicit in somehow swindling him out of millions.
Jessica's investigation reveals that Hal was far from the only victim and when his former business partner is also killed, a deadly pattern emerges. Jessica teams up with a brilliant young computer hacker to follow the trail but as she gets closer to the truth, two near misses force her to realize that she may very well be the next victim.
The stakes have never been this high as Jessica finds herself being stalked by the killer she is trying to catch. She must now set the perfect trap to avoid her very own date with murder.
Jessica Fletcher takes up the case of her good friend Barbara "Babs" Wirth after Babs' husband Hal suffers a fatal heart attack that Jessica has reason to believe was actually murder. At the heart of her suspicions lies a sinister dating site Hal had used while he and Babs were having marital issues, a site that may be complicit in somehow swindling him out of millions.
Jessica's investigation reveals that Hal was far from the only victim and when his former business partner is also killed, a deadly pattern emerges. Jessica teams up with a brilliant young computer hacker to follow the trail but as she gets closer to the truth, two near misses force her to realize that she may very well be the next victim.
The stakes have never been this high as Jessica finds herself being stalked by the killer she is trying to catch. She must now set the perfect trap to avoid her very own date with murder.
TOP TEN TELEVISION
CRIME/MYSTERY SHOWS
To celebrate the publication of A DATE WITH
MURDER, my first effort writing as Jessica Fletcher in the MURDER, SHE WROTE
series, I thought I’d put together my Top Ten list of the most influential
crime/mystery shows in television history.
THE UNTOUCHABLES: Fans will remember Robert
Stack’s brilliant turn as Elliot Ness, the Walter Winchell narration, and that
great Nelson Riddle instrumental theme song. What gets forgotten is that this
was the show that defined cops and robbers tales for years to come. Often
imitated, but never equaled, Ness and company’s battle with underworld Chicago
in the days of Al Capone and Frank Nitty played out week after week in
hardboiled and violent fashion.
HILL STREET BLUES: One of the
shows that changed television forever, upping the ante across the board as far
as writing, plotting and characterization. The late Steven Bochco’s ensemble
cast battle bad guys, their worst tendencies, and each other while going about
their daily jobs fighting crime. Many of the great crime shows that dominate
the cable airwaves owe a huge debt to Blues,
which more than any other show at the time brought moral ambiguity to the small
screen.
COLUMBO: What
can I say about the rumpled detective famously played by Peter Falk that
basically redefined the television mystery? It wasn’t a whodunit so much as
how’s-he-solve-it, and Columbo never disappointed. The series invited the
audience to play along, searching for the elusive prime clue to be revealed
only in the final moment. Episodes ran in various forms for an astounding 30+
years. In not a single one did Columbo ever draw his gun or lose his zeal.
Still one of the smartest and best-written shows in television history.
MURDER, SHE WROTE: Okay,
I’m a little prejudiced but this fabulously successful television show starring
Angela Lansbury in the title role ran for a dozen years, all but one of them
among the top ten rated shows, spawned four TV movies, and is still enjoying a
successful run in syndication on Hallmark Mysteries. The notion of an amateur
sleuth spawned a slew of imitators that never achieved this level of success or
resonated as much or as long in pop culture. It’s safe to say that Jessica
Fletcher is America’s premier sleuth with a near 100% name recognition value.
THE ROCKFORD FILES: The clever answering machine staple opening
alerted us from the start of every episode that we were in for a detective tale
of fresh ilk. Its light tone, crack ensemble, recurring cast and James Garner’s
star turn in the lead role made it must-see TV before anyone had officially
coined the term. Garner’s deadpan delivery defined a show that took itself just
seriously enough. I can’t remember a single plot-line; all I remember is how
much I loved the show.
LAW AND ORDER: Take your pick as to which one. SVU is still on the air and the original
faded out only after a 20+ year run. The series breathed new life into a then
moribund TV genre by reinventing the form and managing to survive a slew of
cast changes. Such changes had doomed the likes of Route 66, but creator Dick Wolf’s genre-bending format rendered
cast members basically interchangeable. Every week, Law and Order did and does deliver on its promise, touching on
front-page topics in never letting us down.
CSI: Again, take your pick, but
for me the early years of CSI: Las Vegas,
starring the great William Petersen similarly helped redefine the television
crime genre. Entire episodes would go by without a single gunfight, the action
that demanded and commanded our attention limited at times to the
claustrophobic confines of police labs where the contents of microscope slides
spurred the biggest reveals. Each episode is basically a puzzle waiting to be
assembled. We often know, at least suspect, who the killer is, the fun lying in
the process used to catch him. Consider CSI
the anti-Columbo. The rumbled detective wouldn’t even know how to spell
electron spectrograph, while Petersen’s Gil Grissom couldn’t solve a case
without one.
NYPD BLUE: Tame by comparison
with today’s cable fare, this second Steve Bochco creation nonetheless raised
eyebrows everywhere in terms of content ranging from language to
sexually-charged subject matter. Yes, it’s known primarily for its
salaciousness and being way ahead of its time, but it was also an outstanding
police procedural that weathered numerous cast changes in dominating talk
around the water cooler for years. Gritty, grungy and morally ambiguous, this
is television, and crime drama, at its level best.
PERRY MASON: Enjoy
legal thrillers? They owe their existence to this splendid series of eighty
books penned by Earl Stanley Gardner and a television show by the same name
starring Raymond Burr in the title role that ran for a decade. The episodes,
and the books, continue to hold up and the notion of a sleuthing lawyer and his
entourage spawned the likes of John Grisham and Scott Turow, not to mention the
slew of lawyer shows that have long been a television programming staple.
MIAMI VICE: One of the true
game changers in the history of the airwaves that everyone rushed home to watch
when it aired on Friday nights. The show brought both pop music and men’s
fashion into the mainstream with musicians and designers alike battling for
inclusion from the moment Phil Collins’ “Into the Air Tonight” themed the climactic
shootout in the premier. Brandon Tartikoff legendarily based the series on the
phrase “MTV cops” he once jotted down on a notepad. True or not, the show
brought television into the forefront of pop culture, setting the stage for
when the small screen would actually come to define it.
I’m already starting to think of some of the shows I left off this list.
How about you? Which would you add?
Since his first book was published in 1983, Jon Land has written twenty-eight novels, seventeen of which have appeared on national bestseller lists. He began writing technothrillers before Tom Clancy put them in vogue, and his strong prose, easy characterization, and commitment to technical accuracy have made him a pillar of the genre.
Land spent his college years at Brown University, where he convinced the faculty to let him attempt writing a thriller as his senior honors thesis. Four years later, his first novel, The Doomsday Spiral, appeared in print. In the last years of the Cold War, he found a place writing chilling portrayals of threats to the United States, and of the men and women who operated undercover and outside the law to maintain U.S. security. His most successful of those novels were the nine starring Blaine McCracken, a rogue CIA agent and former Green Beret with the skills of James Bond but none of the Englishman’s tact.
Land currently lives in Providence, not far from his alma mater.
Land currently lives in Providence, not far from his alma mater.
As always, please leave a comment and
let me know what you think!
Follow my blog by clicking
on the link in the upper right hand
on the link in the upper right hand
corner of this page.
