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MURDER SHE WROTE -- A VOTE FOR MUDER
by Jessica Fletcher and Donald Bain
New American Library, October 2004
277 pages
$19.95
ISBN: 0451213033


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Jessica Fletcher ends up in the middle of political intrigue when the Maine senator's chief of staff dies. Did she drink a little too much at the party and fall down the rickety stairs? Was she pushed by someone trying to influence Nebel's swing vote? Does this have any relationship to the rumors that she and the senator were involved in something unsavory?

A VOTE FOR MURDER starts off like an episode of Murder, She Wrote; light and undemanding but entertaining. Set in Washington DC, most of the flavor comes from gratuitous guidebook details such as which President installed what furniture in the White House. Jessica also spends a fair amount of text describing the food she eats and musing about the people she meets. All of this combines to give the book a very cozy feel.

Unfortunately, halfway through the novel an event happens that doesn't so much suspend my disbelief as blindfold it, drop a noose over its neck, and open a trap door beneath its feet. While Jessica is at a breakfast meeting in Nebel's office, a crazed man rushes in and pulls a gun. Jessica recognizes him as a Cabot Cove eccentric and talks him into putting the gun down before the Capitol Hill police arrive, at which point she swans out to let them deal with it. A few hours later on her return to the building, she notes that there are comparatively minor security changes.

Donald Bain's research must not have included what happened after July 1998, when a disturbed man smuggled a gun past Capitol Hill security and killed several people before he was stopped outside Representative DeLay's office. Even ignoring that, I find it hard to believe that anyone would think that post-9/11 security would be lax enough to let a weapon in, slow enough for someone else to fix the problem, casual enough to let a witness leave the scene, and incompetent enough to not lock down the building.

The twitching corpse of my disbelief was finally finished off by a Fairfax Country policeman soliciting Jessica's help in solving the death. They might solicit unprofessional help in fictional, casual Cabot Cove, but in reality this case would be swarming with competent local police, neighboring jurisdictions, and possibly also the FBI and Secret Service.

Much of A VOTE FOR MURDER has been fictionalized. Current politicians are not named and the 2001 murder of Kathleen Peterson, obviously the basis for the story, is not mentioned. But because Bain makes plot points out of the 2003 East Coast blackout, the Condit/Levy affair, and terrorist attacks, there is no excuse for him to pretend the novel took place in a pre-9/11 capitol.

Beyond the security flaws I was surprised to see that Jessica, after having written copious crime novels and solved multiple murders, wasn't familiar with the basic forensics of a fall. Death by falling and death by being hit on the head are so prevalent in cozies and the television show that she should know what is suspicious and what would be normal. Furthermore, there is a distasteful gay=shameful plot point.

All combined, I had to vote "nay" on A VOTE FOR MURDER.

Reviewed by Linnea Dodson, November 2004

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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