Jessica travels to meet a friend, Horace Lynchfield, at an awards ceremony. However, pretty words quickly fall by the wayside when Horace irritates a fellow author, who subsequently turns up dead with Horace's sword-cane in his chest. To clear his name, Jessica will have to deal with the unpromising circumstantial evidence, Horace's lack of an alibi, and an ambitious district attorney eager to close the case as fast as possible.
This episode includes examples of the following tropes:
- Accidental Murder: The murderer, "Debbie Delancey"/Miss Lapinski, killed Hemsley Post by accident while trying to defend herself from his aggressive advances.
- Age-Gap Romance: Hemsley Post, MC of the Gotham Book Awards and Tiffany Harrow (twenty-odd years younger), assistant coordinator of ceremonies are in the middle of flirting when his wife knocks on the door, wryly commenting on how his mistresses seem to be getting younger when she enters.
- The Alcoholic: Horace regularly gets blotto and says that his giving up alcohol would be like depriving a race car of its gasoline.
- Ambiguously Gay: Adrian Winslow is somewhat camp, and his work on Classical history is derided by Post as "prissy drivel" about "Greek boys mincing about". His alibi is that he was having dinner with a young man from the press, and he strongly implies that Post's wife thought he and Post had a relationship.
- Attempted Rape: "Debbie Delancey" went up to Hemsley Post's hotel room to try to get her brother Frank's manuscript back and accidentally stabbed him in panic when he tried to force himself on her.
- Bait-and-Switch: In the opening a man sitting alone in his booth at a restaurant laments on his loneliness, and woefully draws a gun on himself. It turns out the gun is a lighter and the man is a poet trying out a new sonnet.
- Brick Joke: During a party, Horace takes out what looks like a gun, but it turns out it's his cigarette lighter. At the end, he takes it out again, scaring a lady behind a counter and causing her to press the alarm.
- The Dog Was the Mastermind: The killer was the novice author who asked Jessica to read her manuscript.
- Only a Lighter: There are several gags with Horace's pistol-shaped lighter.
- Plagiarism in Fiction: Hemsley's writer's block hasn't actually gone away, he's passing off a work about Vietnam sent to him by Frank Lapinski for review as his own.
- The Pornomancer: Women (our heroine excluded) just seem naturally attracted to Horace. He's mentioned as having broken a lot of hearts in Cabot Cove, and throughout the episode we see him charming ladies just by being himself. Perhaps Most Writers Are Writers applies here?
- Really Gets Around: Apparently, Horace had quite a bit of fun in Cabot Cove when he visited the summer before. He mentions at least two ladies he seems to have been close to and Jessica mentions several broken hearts he left behind.
- Satchel Switcheroo: With umbrellas. Jessica realises that everyone at the party took the wrong umbrella, and if she can find out who took Horace's, this could help identify the murderer. It does, but not directly — it turns out Hemsley took it himself.
- Shell-Shocked Veteran: Frank Lapinski's time in Vietnam seems to have given him some anger management issues, as while being angry at Hemsley Post for stealing his Vietnam novel is understandable, violently assaulting and threatening his life instead of taking it to court is unwise.
- Starving Artist: Horace Lynchfield, a poet, borrows twenty bucks from Jessica and is more eager about free refreshments at the reception than about actually getting a reward.
- Stealing the Credit: Hemsley Post had lost his touch as a writer years ago. When a hopeful novelist named Frank Lapinski sent him a novel on the Vietnam War for critique, he planned to publish it under his own name.
- Sword Cane: Horace has a sword-umbrella, which is the murder weapon, more because it's a fanciful thing to own than out of any intent to ever use it.
- Taking the Heat: When caught by the police, Frank Lapinski flat-out admits to having killed Hemsley Post and says he doesn't regret it. The real killer was his sister, who turns herself in to save him after hearing about it.
- What Did I Do Last Night?: Horace Lynchfield, Jessica's friend, tends to drink copiously, so the night of Hemsley Post's murder is a complete blank to him, which doesn't help Jessica's attempts to exonerate him. It turns out he spent the night in a tryst with a fellow author. He sure wishes he remembers that.
- Writer's Block: Hemsley Post, celebrated author, hasn't been able to string two words together in years.
- Write What You Know: In-universe. Veteran Frank Lapinski wrote a novel about the Vietnam War. His sister wrote a short story about being a teen girl watching her brother go to war.
- You Owe Me: Hemsley's wife Alexis heard that he got a six-figure advance on his new book after years of writer's block, and wants the 264,000 dollars of money she lent him over those years. Considering that comes to around $740,000 buckaroos in 2023 money, that's understandable.
