Reassessing Murder, She Wrote: The Afterlives of a Popular Culture Phenomenon

by Eva Burke (Editor), Jennifer Schnabel (Editor)

Overview

This book provides a critical overview of the cultural impact of the Murder, She Wrote TV series and its paratextual elements, including board and video games, podcasts, fan conventions, collectible figures, and ghostwritten novels. It also explores the series’ position within the crime genre, particularly its engagement with earlier iterations of the ‘lady detective’.

Bringing together a broad range of experts, the book includes contributions from both academics and crime fiction novelists to offer a wide-ranging view of this popular series and its afterlives.

Suitable for scholars and students working on popular culture, crime fiction, TV studies or fan studies, this collection provides an interdisciplinary analysis of one of the most successful and enduring female-fronted detective series in history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781032572635
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	03/18/2025
Series:	Routledge Advances in Popular Culture Studies
Pages:	216
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Eva Burke completed her PhD, funded by the Irish Research Council, at the school of English at Trinity College Dublin under the supervision of Dr. Clare Clarke. Her research looks at domestic noir fiction, specifically the work of Gillian Flynn. Eva has published work in the Journal of International Women’s Studies, Feminist Spaces and Trinity Postgraduate Review and the 2018 edited collection From the Domestic to the Dominant: The New Face of Crime Fiction, published by Palgrave Macmillan. She also co-edited a special ‘domestic noir’ issue of Clues: A Journal of Detection.

Jennifer Schnabel is associate professor and English subject librarian at The Ohio State University. She contributes scholarly book reviews to Clues: A Journal of Detection and Crime Fiction Studies, and her own research explores women and crime fiction. She recently co-chaired the Mystery and Detective Fiction Area of the Popular Culture Association and is the Research Support Officer for the International Crime Fiction Association.

Table of Contents

Introduction. Part I: J.B. Fletcher, Writing, and Genre  1. The Fairest of Them All: Jessica Fletcher’s Reign of the Queen of Mystery in Murder, She Wrote, Jennifer Schnabel 2. Women Writing for Television’s Woman Writer: The Fourteen Women Writers of Murder, She Wrote, Kristi Humphreys 3. Murder She Wrote: Bridging the Gap Between the Golden Age and Cosy Mysteries, Phyllis M. Betz Part II: Jessica Fletcher, Gender, and Detection 4. Misogyny She Wrote: How Murder, She Wrote Typifies the Backlash Against Feminism, Mary P. Freier 5. “This Woman Has a Brilliant Criminal Mind”: Information Behavior of a Widow Woman from Maine, Michelle M. Kazmer 6. The Undercover Feminism of Jessica Fletcher in Murder, She Wrote, Sharon Dempsey  Part III: Environments and Global Impact of Murder, She Wrote  7. “...Something sultry and seductive about this place”: New Orleans in the Murder, She Wrote Imagination, Jill E. Anderson 8. “Norman Rockwell-land” or “Death Capital of Maine”? Race, Social Status, and Parochialism as Factors in the Perceived ‘Coziness’ of Crime in Reagan-Era Cabot Cove, Allysha Powanda Winburn, Mark J. Winburn, and Cate E. Bird 9. From Murder, She Wrote to La Signora in Giallo: Jessica Fletcher as a Pop Culture Icon in Italy, Lucia Casiraghi and Nicolò Salmaso 10. “Now, am I imagining things, or isn't that a little fairy person there in among the flowers?”: Constructions of ‘Ireland’ in Murder, She Wrote, Eva Burke  Part IV: Influences, Intertextuality, and Echoes 11. ‘Agatha Christie’s ghost may strike you dead!’: Murder, She Wrote and an Agatha Christie Sense of Murder, Mark Aldridge 12. Death in Plastic: A Ludonarrative Analysis of Murder, She Wrote: The Game and Murder on Madison Avenue, Marco Arnaudo 13. Re-watching Murder, She Wrote: An Auto-Ethnographic Exploration of Queer Fandom and Race, Nina Trivedi