When visiting the daughter of one of his old colleagues at a signing for a book she co-authored with two other women, Mark discovers that the book centers on the events that have happened in the lives of the other authors as escorts, and it names names.
"Murder by the Book" displays symptoms of the following tropes:
- Boom, Headshot!: Thomas Pitt is done in with a bullet to the dome.
- Faking the Dead: Shauna fakes her own murder as part of her Inheritance Murder.
- Inheritance Murder: Melissa's motive appears in the form of a survivor's clause in the book contract, all the royalties and rights go to the surviving authors. If all three are dead, it goes to a bogus foundation Shauna set up.
- Karmic Death: Shauna ultimately ends up getting a cerebral commotion while trying to run Melissa over with a car.
- Needle in a Stack of Needles: Thomas, the initial suspect stalking Melissa, Shauna and Carrie, is assumed to be one of 86 men the authors cited in their book.
- Sinister Suffocation: Carrie Snead is done in with what appears to be a plastic bag over her head.
