Messengers of Midnight by JB Fletcher

Portrait of a Lady in Black by Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell
thanks to National Galleries of Scotland 

Title: Messengers of Midnight 

Author: JB Fletcher 

Publisher: Hartley Publishing 

Source: TV series Murder She Wrote S8 E13 Incident in Lot 7

Goodness me, I can just hear you thinking: she must spend all day lying in bed watching Murder She Wrote on repeat. But am I? Not a bit of it. Yes, there is often an episode on in the background when I am cooking, doing the washing up, or cleaning the kitchen. Better yet, when I am tackling a pile of ironing. But I have my ears trained to pick up a mention of a fictional book or a play. Of course, this only worked if my husband was not in the room. As sure as eggs is eggs, he would talk over a book title, and it would be lost to posterity. Until some channel decided to screen that episode again.

So here we have Jessica Fletcher’s Messengers of Midnight, based on a true story (in Murder She Wrote land) and about to be turned into a film. You might suppose that Jessica would have avoided the film industry after the fiasco with The Corpse Danced at Midnight. But no, here we are again with the screen writer wanting to add in a car chase, a steamy romance, and several more murders. Not quite Jessica’s style. And what would her fans think?

And in S9 E1 Murder in Milan, we have another screen adaptation. This time of Jessica Fletcher’s All the Murderers which may have been filmed in Milan, or it could just be that the production team is in Milan for a film festival. The screenplay has been written by Andrew Thayer, and we are told it’s a great movie. Well, that makes a change. But once again we don’t get any idea what the book is about.

I really do wonder how Jessica finds the time to write all these bestselling books. I mean, with all the friends she has to visit, the college courses she teaches, and of course the murder cases she solves, how does she find the time?

And look at this list. I have been reporting books that I have seen in episodes of the TV series, but honestly, wasn’t expecting to find this long list of Jessica Fletcher books on Wikipedia. That was silly of me.

Woman in Black at the Opera by Mary Cassatt thanks to Artchive.com