Jessica Fletcher, a widowed English teacher, receives a surprise when her nephew Grady tells her he got the manuscript she wrote published. The rush of publicity brings her up to New York, where life quickly starts imitating her art. Plotting a murder mystery in fiction is one thing; can Jessica use her skills to solve a case in real life?
This episode includes examples of the following tropes:
- Alone with the Psycho: Set up and then subverted quite effectively: Jessica is alone with the killer as she finally figures everything out and he approaches her from behind in what looks like a setup to attempt to silence her (complete with suspense-inducing background music). He then asks if she will come with him when he goes to confess.
- Anti-Villain: The killer is being blackmailed over a crime for which he was framed originally, and he kills his blackmailer. He only loses Jessica's sympathy because he kills someone else too.
- Asshole Victim:
- Dexter Baxendale was a blackmailing scumbag, which makes it easier for Jessica to sympathize with Preston. At first.
- Caleb McCallum is not a particularly nice person, either, though he did not deserve to be murdered as a diversion.
- Bait-and-Switch: As Jessica is getting off a bus, a Black man tails close behind her, seemingly with sinister intent. Then Jessica gets mugged by a couple of punks, and the Black man saves her by whooping their asses.
- Blackmail Backfire: Dexter Baxendale finds out that Preston Giles is an escaped convict and tries to squeeze some money out of him. He gets his face blown off with a shotgun for the trouble.
- Establishing Character Moment: While leaving after a quick meeting with a play's director, Jessica compliments him on the production. Then she says she's sure none of the audience will figure out that the killer was the uncle, demonstrating that her talent for mystery writing enables her to see solutions to other mysteries.
- "Eureka!" Moment: Looking at the newspaper column and seeing that the reporter who was supposed to interview her was a young woman, not a man as Preston had previously claimed, causes Jessica to realize that he must have been speaking to Baxendale on the phone call she overheard, which in turn causes her to realize that he is the murderer.
- Facial Horror: We don't get to see the results, but considering Baxendale was shot in the face with a shotgun used for skeet shooting, it's not hard to imagine that it ain't pretty.
- Murder by Mistake: For a while, it's thought that the killer may have murdered the private eye while trying to kill the captain, who was originally wearing the Sherlock Holmes costume. At the end, Jessica reveals that she sorted out that the lighting coming on at a certain time meant there was no way it would have been dark enough for the killer to make such an error.
- Pilot Movie: "The Murder of Sherlock Holmes", naturally; it's a double-length episode that shows how her writing career starts and how her detective career starts.
- Plagiarism in Fiction: Jessica Fletcher gets accused of this by a woman named Agnes Peabody during a disastrous trip to New York, and gets served a subpoena. Jessica later finds out from her new publishing agent that Agnes Peabody's actually a con artist who does that shit on every new author who comes to the city.
- Second Love: Defied. Jessica and Preston Giles are attracted to each other, but Jessica's wary of entering another relationship after the death of her husband Frank. Plus, he's a double murderer, which is a red flag for most people.
- Shout-Out: In the pilot, a man dressed as Sherlock Holmes is the murder victim.
- Sympathetic Murderer: Subverted; the killer, Preston Giles, murders his blackmailer. Jessica admits she might have felt sympathy for him except that he then killed a second, completely innocent person, just to throw her off his trail.
- Unwanted Assistance: Grady is the one responsible for Jessica's fame. He sent her manuscript to a publisher under the pretense of helping her. She's not very happy with this — at first.
- Whole-Plot Reference: Preston Giles' backstory is a direct reference to The Count of Monte Cristo, which is Lampshaded, as this is the reason that he chose to dress as Edmond Dantes.
