Jessica Fletcher, a middle-aged widow in New England, writes a mystery novel in her spare time. Despite her objections, the novel ends up getting published and Jessica finds herself trapped in New York doing a round of publicity for the newly minted bestseller. After a weekend invitation to a party at the country house of her publisher turns into a real life murder mystery, Jessica transforms into a reluctant detective in order to extricate her nephew, Grady, from a murder charge.

This is a decent enough murder mystery and a respectable first installment to a series. The reader gets introduced to English teacher, Jessica, in her natural habitat of a quaint small town, and then follows her to her adventure as a fish-out-of-water in the big city. The murder that follows is an interesting enough story without being overly original or compelling. Jessica’s nephew is arrested for murder after his employer and a private detective are both killed, and the evidence points to Grady as the murderer with corporate espionage as the motive.

The real murderer is easy to spot early on; but I vaguely remember seeing the TV episode on which this novel is based several years ago, so that may explain why it was so easy to intuitively identify the culprit.

The most unappealing aspects of this book are the annoying characters themselves: Grady in particular, and—to a lesser extent—Jessica. Grady is just obnoxious in the extreme; it was actually quite satisfying to see him get arrested and face the possibility of execution when he is arrested on suspicion of murder! The fact that he actually steals…STEALS!...his aunt’s manuscript and then has the nerve to pass it off to various other people without her permission is just insufferable and really made me utterly despise him throughout the book. His constant insistence on forcing his aunt to do everything she doesn’t want to do, but that is advantageous to him & his girlfriend, is equally obnoxious…agreeing to publish the book, going to New York, staying in New York, accepting her publishers’ invitations, etc., etc., etc. I got so sick of Grady by the end of the book, I wanted to toss him off the side of a cliff myself.

And the fact that Jessica just puts up with it is equally infuriating. Grady violates her privacy while a guest in her home, steals from her, and bandies her manuscript all over, and then strong-arms her into having the book published against her will. Jessica just meekly takes all of his crap…and then some. Her attitude as a doormat then extends to her relationships with Kitt, and her publisher, and so on. That grew really tedious, really quickly. Jessica’s character is an older widow who has spent years working as an English teacher; one would really expect her to have more of a backbone than that. Hopefully, she’ll acquire more self-respect and grow a spine as the series progresses. ( )