Fit for Murder: A Murder, She Wrote Mystery

In Fletcher and Moran’s routine latest Murder, She Wrote mystery (after Death on the Emerald Isle), writer and sleuth Jessica Fletcher is at work on a new novel when former Cabot Cove Gazette editor Evelyn Phillips returns to the small Maine town to check in on her and Jessica’s mutual friend, Bertha Mae Cormier. After Evelyn and Jessica visit Bertha Mae, they become less concerned with the addled letters she’s been sending to Evelyn and more concerned that her young, handsome next-door neighbor, Martin Terranova, is taking advantage of her. Bertha Mae is clearly smitten with the decades-younger fitness junkie, and her friends come to suspect he’s a serial predator intent on manipulating older people into granting him access to her finances. When Martin is found murdered, Evelyn’s public distrust of him makes her the prime suspect. Jessica, however, believes one of Martin’s other elderly victims has taken him down, and sets out to clear her friend’s name. Fans will know exactly what they’re getting into, but newbies may balk at the surplus of overdescribed tea times and the stilted dialogue. It’s a forgettable installment in a venerable series. Agent: Kim Lionetti, BookEnds Literary. (Jan.)