Fifteen Things You May Not Know About Jessica Fletcher
May 30th, 2019
by Jon Land
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? The producers actually wanted 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 never got hers either.
Jessica served as 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. Jessica set-building turned out so bad, she never volunteered again.
When Jessica and her husband Frank raised their nephew, Grady, Jessica worked as 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 become a close friend of Jessica’s. The night Eve showed them the house at 698 Candlewood Lane also marked the first meeting between Jessica and 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 more than 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. Sutherland returns in Murder in Red. The closest she ever came to a love interest in the TV series was with 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.
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 played Christie’s famed sleuth, Jane Marple, in the 1980 film The Mirror Cracked.
Spoiler Alert! Or a preview of What’s Next. A number of the factoids above are drawn from A Time for Murder, #50 in the Murder, She Wrote series, which will be published this coming November and will introduce Jessica as a younger woman, twenty-five years in the past, for the first time in books or television!
Jon Land is the award-winning, USA Today bestselling author of 50 books, including ten titles in the critically acclaimed Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong series, the most recent of which, Strong as Steel, was called “what might be the best novel of 2019” by Suspense Magazine. Murder in Red marks his third effort writing as Jessica Fletcher for the Murder, She Wrote series, and he’s also teamed with Heather Graham for a new sci-fi series starting with The Rising.
