Murder, She Wrote Monday: The "Earth-Prime" work of Jessica B. Fletcher

Not only does Jessica Fletcher write successful novels in character on the TV series Murder, She Wrote, but she is also a prolific author in this world--yes, our world, which I like to call Earth-Prime after my misspent youth reading DC Comics. Donald Bain is credited as the co-writer, but I like to think he just transcribed Jessica's audiotapes since she is too busy solving murders to sit down and type out manuscripts. Of course, since Bain died in 2017, he probably isn't even doing that anymore.

According to Wikipedia, Jon Land took over the series after Bain's passing, and now 3 books are scheduled under the name of Terrie Farley Moran, or "Jessica Fletcher and Terrie Farley Moran," that is. It's amazing that the books roll on 25 years after the television show signed off.  The first novel appeared in 1989, and then there was a gap until 1994, but since then there has been at least one and often more than one new mystery novel every year except 2017, and given what happened then, that's understandable.

(In case you're wondering, Bain died of congestive heart failure and not under suspicious circumstances involving one of Jessica's relatives.)

Has anyone here read any of the books? I picked up a few cheap paperbacks at a used book store a while back. To think I mocked the show when it aired back in the day, yet now I watch reruns each week and paid actual money for two novels based on it! When my girlfriend and I picked these two up, we thought it would be fun to read them aloud, and given that they are written in the first person, that does sound like quite a diversion. We haven't read them yet, but someday!

Here are the two I have, from 1995 and 1997, respectively:

Brandy and Bullets features some kind of attempt to bring "high art" and culture to Cabot Cove, so that sounds fun. Murder on the QE2 sends Jess on a free cruise she earns for giving mystery-writing lectures on board. I'm not sure that all this will work without the special guest stars and luminaries like The Bos, but I do plan to give it a try!

Next time we'll go back into the episodes with one of my favorite titles of the series so far.