Murder Me Pretty by Nick Culhane

Thanks to Walking and Crawling 

Title: Murder Me Pretty 

Author: Nick Culhane

Publisher: not known 

Source: TV series Murder She Wrote S7 E22 The Skinny According to Nick Culhane 

Nick Culhane is a former sports writer who used to write fairly successful detective novels about a character called Rick Sledge. Murder Me Pretty was on the bestseller list for several weeks.

He also used to be a spokesman for the Schmesser Brewery and appeared in their advertising campaigns. In fact he was the face of Schmesser Beer. But Nick is now something of a has been. The young people (as the old folks say) have never heard of him so he no longer fits the brand. And they sack him.

However, Nick has written a new book, it’s quite a departure from his previous work in that it’s closely based on the staged kidnapping of brewery heir Ogden Schmesser. Ogden is totally unsuited to running a brewery. He spends his days fiddling with early computer games, throwing paper planes and chasing unsuitable women. And apparently he staged his own kidnapping to weasel several million dollars out of his grandfather. We learn that Nick had been cosying up to all the secretaries at the brewery to get behind the scenes of the story.

In the book the young heir to a brewery is manipulated by an unscrupulous attorney and guess what, together they engineer a fake kidnapping. Well, well, well. Unsurprisingly Ogden is desperate to get hold of Nick’s new book.

Nick sends a copy of his manuscript to Jessica Fletcher, who reads it and is very impressed. She leaves a message on his answering machine (this was in the olden days of landlines and special machines to record voice messages) and tells him she loved every word. 

Nick’s computer and his copy of the manuscript is destroyed by one of Ogden’s henchmen, but one copy of this unnamed book remains. The copy that Nick sent to Jessica. So he makes tracks for Cabot Cove to get his book back.

Unfortunately, Nick is in deep trouble what with the loan sharks (gambling debts obvs), not to mention the aforementioned Ogden Schmesser. And, as one of the reviewers on IMDb puts it, a veritable army of disreputable and even more disreputable characters descend on Cabot Cove. Naturally poor old Nick ends up dead.

Most luckily Jessica has lent the manuscript to her friend Ben, the proprietor of the local newspaper, who has taken it to read on a camping trip to Canada. So unless Ben drops it in a river, it is totally safe from all this mayhem. But oh no…. he posted it back to her and someone disreputable has just gained access to her house.

I do hope Jessica manages to get Nick’s best book published in his memory.

I wonder how many people really do stage a kidnapping to winkle out money from tight fisted grandparents? None of my grandparents had any money so there was no point in me trying to arrange my own kidnap, but it’s a plot we see twice in Murder She Wrote, and in both instances someone has written a book about it. And wouldn’t you just know it; both writers are murdered for their pains. See The Other Side of the Blindfold. Well, I suppose you can’t have Murder She Wrote without a murder or two.

Thanks to Galerie 123