ANGELA LANSBURY: R.I.P.

ANGELA LANSBURY: R.I.P.

    What an amazing woman and career...

From the NYT:

Angela Lansbury, a formidable actress who captivated Hollywood in her youth, became a Broadway musical sensation in middle age and then drew millions of fans as a widowed mystery writer on the long-running television series “Murder, She Wrote,” died on Tuesday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 96.

Read more here. 

A Time for Murder...and Something New: Guest Post by Jon Land

JON LAND:
A TIME FOR MURDER . . . AND SOMETHING NEW 

A Time for Murder marks the 50th title in the iconic Murder, She Wrote book series based on the fabulously successful television show. Of those fifty titles, I’ve been lucky enough to pen four now, which carries with it a tremendous responsibility to the series’ fans and followers. After all, Murder, She Wrote has been around since it debuted on CBS in 1984 and was regularly rated among the most-watched shows on the air for a dozen seasons, drawing audiences that often approached twenty million viewers.

The opportunity to take over a series I knew and loved so much (my second favorite TV mystery series after Columbo!) was surreal. As a thriller writer, would I be up to the task? Would I be able to satisfy the legions of fans who followed the television series into the book world or discovered the books separately?

I knew from the moment I put to pen to paper—well, fingers to keyboard—that the answers to both questions was a resounding, YES! That’s because I was able to find Jessica Fletcher’s voice in my first series contribution, A Date with Murder, right from the start. She’s listed as my co-author with good reason, because it’s her voice I hear in my mind when I’m writing (Well, Angela Lansbury’s voice, actually!).

Early on in the process, I thought it would be fun to give the series a bit of a reboot in terms of timing and technology. I didn’t want to leave Jessica stranded in an unchanged past, so my writing evoked Murder, She Wrote updated to the current day with Uber, iPhones, text messages, and a Cabot Cove newly besieged by tourists. But the essence of her character remained the same; she may compose her novels on the latest Mac, but she still does her research at the Cabot Cove Library where she serves as president of the friends group.

At some point during the writing of my next two efforts, Manuscript for Murder and Murder in Red, I asked myself what could I do that no one had ever done before? My thinking on that started with a conversation about how the television series might stage a return someday. CBS has already flirted with the notion, with Octavia Spencer in the lead role. The network, though, ultimately backed off, figuring there was only one Jessica Fletcher and her initials are “AL.”

But what about a younger Jessica Fletcher, I asked myself? A Jessica still married to very much alive husband Frank, raising her nephew Grady, and serving as a substitute English teacher at a Maine high school while trying to get published twenty-five years in the past. What if a murder happened at that high school and Jessica was drawn in, finding that she not only has a knack for solving crime, but also for writing mysteries?

And so A Time for Murder was born. I had an absolute blast reverse-engineering the back story presented and/or hinted at in the television show. For instance, the name of the high school where Jessica taught is never mentioned anywhere on the show or in the previous books in the series. But she met her husband Frank while the two of them were volunteering on a play at the Appleton Playhouse, so I placed them in Appleton. And when the town’s beloved high school principal is murdered, who do you think the detective on the case turns out to be?

Amos Tupper, future sheriff of Cabot Cove fabulously played by Tom Bosley in the TV series. That gave me an excuse to explore the very origins of his relationship with Jessica, as well as incorporating one of the TV series’ most popular characters into the story, no easy task given that he was replaced long ago as sheriff by Mort Metzger.

To say I was off and running with A Time for Murder would be an understatement. Indeed, I was off on a dead sprint following a murder in the present intrinsically connected to that of the high school principal in the past. Add to that the fact that Jessica has been invited to a retirement party for one of her old colleagues at Appleton High and I had the connective tissue that every book demands, in this case through flashback chapters triggered by Jessica’s memories.

I was essentially writing two separate, interconnected stories and having a blast with both of them. And in that respect A Time for Murder became what superhero film fans might call an “origins” story, as it sought to answer many of the questions never addressed by either the previous books or the TV series itself. And I can’t tell you how rewarding it was to bring something new to a series that enjoys such great name/brand recognition, a series that has been around for more than thirty-five years.

I always tell people that one of the real keys to penning a great story is to enjoy writing it as much as the reader will enjoy reading it. And I have every confidence that fans of both the book and television series will love meeting Frank and young Grady, not to mention (spoiler alert!) younger versions of real estate agent Eve Simpson and Seth Hazlitt, along with the aforementioned Amos Tupper. Want more? How about Jessica seeing her beloved home at 698 Candlewood Lane for the first time and wondering whether she and Frank can afford it? We’ll see her in A Time for Murder displaying her incredible powers of observation for the first time in solving a murder twenty-five years in the past that culminates in a Columbo-like twist.

As a thriller writer by nature, I so enjoy exposing Jessica to a bit more danger than she’s been used to in the past; in fact, one critic coined a new literary term in describing my approach to Murder, She Wrote: the cozy thriller. Labels aside, I find America’s favorite sleuth to be an exceptionally strong woman, forging a great life for herself without anyone else’s help. I always found her to be ahead of her time back when the series was on the air, and I continue to see her as a feminist heroine today.

For me, reading a Murder, She Wrote mystery is like visiting twice a year with old friends you haven’t seen in too long. And in A Time for Murder, get ready to take a trip back in time to meet some new ones.

***
Jon Land is the bestselling author over 25 novels. He graduated from Brown University in 1979 Phi Beta Kappa and Magna cum Laude and continues his association with Brown as an alumni advisor.
Jon often bases his novels and scripts on extensive travel and research as well as a twenty-five year career in martial arts.  He is an associate member of the US Special Forces and frequently volunteers in schools to help young people learn to enjoy the process of writing. Jon is the Vice-President of marketing of the International Thriller Writers (ITW) and is often asked to speak on topics regarding writing and research. In addition to writing suspense/thrillers John is also a screenwriter.

TAKING THE MYSTERY OUT OF WRITING MURDER, SHE WROTE: Guest post by Jon Land

Jon Land:
Taking the Mystery Out of Writing Murder, She Wrote

“Have you ever heard of MURDER, SHE WROTE?”  

Ask any one hundred people that question and, chances are, ninety-nine will answer with an unqualified, “Yes!” In addition to being one of the most successful television dramas of all time, and continuing to draw big audiences for its reruns and marathons, the TV show spawned a book series of which my fist effort, A DATE WITH MURDER, is number forty-seven.

Think about that for a moment. I have recently had the privilege and pleasure of taking over a brand that enjoys nearly 100% name recognition and remains so popular that all these books actually followed the television series. While that’s not unprecedented (It happened with The Walking Dead and The Killing, among others.), it’s never happened to this degree of success over such a long period of time.

And now I have the chance to contribute to this classic series. From the moment I first started working with Don Bain, I formed certain parameters for myself, boundary markers I resolved to adhere to as much as possible to assure a smooth transition toward making the book series even more popular. Thought you might be interested in seeing a few.

FINDING JESSICA’S VOICE: Fortunately, Don had worked with his grandson Zach, who’d go on to become a crucial collaborator for me, on the first 60 or so pages of A DATE WITH MURDER. Enough to give me a notion as to the story and, more importantly, a direct link to Jessica’s voice. Finding that voice myself, in my own head, became the first challenge. But it was one that came to me with surprising ease and in true organic fashion. Getting into Jessica’s head became as simple as channeling Angela Lansbury from the classic TV show. I pictured her behind every page, speaking every line. See, I was far more familiar with the show than the books. So I set out to make A DATE WITH MURDER read like an extended episode, containing all the character staples fans continue to welcome into their homes in the hope more of them would gravitate toward the books as well.

THRILLER, MYSTERY, OR BOTH: Okay, I’m a thriller writer. Prior to A DATE WITH MURDER, I’d never penned a book where the focus was more on who did it instead of what bad thing is someone planning to do. So finding Jessica’s voice might’ve been my first challenge, but the next one was blending it with my own. My style makes great use of hooks, cliff-hangars, and plot twists—often so many of them you have to stop to catch your breath. Almost overnight, A DATE WITH MURDER transformed into a hybrid mystery-thriller. A mystery because Jessica is trying to solve the murder of a trusted friend; thriller because she ends up risking her own life to expose a nefarious plot connected to a sinister Internet dating service. I wasn’t going too far out on a limb here because Don Bain’s books had often cast her in the role of crusader, solving a murder that hits close to home.

SECURE THE BASE: I went into the series knowing that first and foremost I needed to capture the series’ core audience that loves the bucolic setting of Cabot Cove and the regular, established cast of characters Jessica interacts with and plays off of. For the dialogue, I relied on the quick, tart and witty exchanges between Angela Lansbury and the late, great Jerry Orbach as Harry McGraw or Ron Masak as Sheriff Mort Metzger. I wasn’t out to reinvent the wheel, you see, just make it churn a little faster. I’m not sure what was more amazing: How swiftly I took to the process or how naturally Jessica’s words and thoughts started to flow for me. The legendary Toni Mendez, my agent for 20+ years, often said, “If you know the characters, you can write anything.” Never before had that edict been put more to the test and I hoped I passed!

EXPAND THE AUDIENCE: Jessica Fletcher is almost without question America’s most famous detective. She could be more well-known than Hercule Poirot, Perry Mason and maybe even Sherlock Holmes, never mind the slew of wonderful modern-day sorts from Robert Parker’s Spenser to Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Milhone to Patricia Cornwall’s Kay Scarpetta. Moving the needle in my mind starts with making the tens of thousands of fans who regularly devour Murder, She Wrote reruns realize the books are just as much fun. I read somewhere that a million people a week watch those reruns on Hallmark Mystery. If I can encourage just some of those fans to enjoy the books, then I’ve contributed to the series’ success.

A SLICE OF HUMBLE PIE: I wanted to make the series mine, put my stamp on it. But MURDER, SHE WROTE doesn’t belong to me and never will. It belongs to the tens of millions of readers and viewers who’ve come to cherish the stories, watching or reading them over and over again while trying to keep up with Jessica Fletcher. Like all great fictional heroes, she’s timeless, ageless, eternal. After me, someone else no doubt will take the reins of this series. While they’re in my hands, though, I’m grateful for the opportunity enjoy the ride at the same time I give you and all readers the best one I can.

***

Jon Land is the USA Today bestselling and International Book award-winning author of 43 books, including the Caitlin Strong series. Land was thrilled to write A DATE WITH MURDER with Donald Bain before his passing in 2017. Land said, “Taking over MURDER, SHE WROTE is one of the greatest opportunities I’ve ever had as an author, if not the greatest. This isn't just a series of books, it’s a brand that enjoys near universal recognition, both because of the fabulously successful TV show and the long string of terrific books that followed by the great Donald Bain. I look forward to living up to both those traditions…. Having grown up relishing the likes of Agatha Christie, Earl Stanley Gardner, Rex Stout and Ed McBain, this opportunity allows me to go back to my roots and find the same joy in writing as ‘Jessica Fletcher’ that I did in reading those classic mysteries.” Donald Bain’s grandson, Zachary Bain, will serve as an early reader and consultant for future books in the series.