This time I thought I’d do an analysis of Murder, She Wrote, one of my all-time favorite TV shows. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s about Jessica Fletcher, a retired schoolteacher-turned-mystery-author who goes around solving murders. Some of those murders take place in her beloved hometown of Cabot Cove, while others occur when she is traveling, most often for her writing career. As a writer myself, I find this show particularly delightful (though I’m often puzzled that we rarely see Jessical actually writing.)
For today’s analysis, we’ll be looking specifically at episode 20 from season 1, titled “Murder Takes the Bus.” In this episode, Jessica and her friend Sheriff Amos Tupper are on a bus to Portland, Maine when they get stranded at a diner because of a storm.
One thing I love about this episode is that it’s a closed circle mystery, where the characters are all stuck together in one place and the murderer is among them. Closed circle mysteries take place in locations where the suspects have no way to leave, like a country house in a snowstorm or a desert island. The key characteristic of a closed circle mystery is that there is a limited number of suspects, they are all stuck together, and they all have plausible motives for murder.
Another thing I love about “Murder Takes the Bus” is that it’s a nod to one of my favorite Twilight Zone episodes: “Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?” The premise is the same: a bunch of people stranded together in a diner during a storm. The only difference is that the Twilight Zone version involves Martians.
Not familiar with the DIY MFA approach to story structure? No problem. Check out this article for a detailed rundown of the framework.
Spoiler Alert! As with any cozy mystery, we all know that the sleuth is going to solve the case in the end. The key, of course, is figuring out who the murderer is. If you haven’t seen this particular episode and you don’t want the ending spoiled, look for it on a streaming service. (I recently caught it on Prime.) Otherwise, be forewarned, there will be spoilers in this essay.
Okay, let’s dive into our analysis of Murder, She Wrote — Season 1, Episode 20: “Murder Takes the Bus.”
ACT 1: Jessica Fletcher and her friend Sheriff Amos Tupper are going to Portland, Maine for a banquet. Amos is anxious to get to the banquet early because there’s a raffle and the grand prize is a big-screen TV. Before they can leave Cabot Cove, the car breaks down and they are forced to take the bus. They board the bus and we meet some of the supporting characters including fellow passengers and the bus driver.
As they drive, Jessica notices a car following them. The bus stops in front of a state penitentiary and a man gets on. When he boards the bus, he seems to recognize one of the passengers, but it’s unclear who.
The bus gets stopped by an emergency worker who says the power lines are down and there’s flooding up ahead. Nevertheless, the bus continues on. The car that was following the bus passes them, then breaks down and the driver also boards. As he is putting his bag on the overhead rack, Jessica notices he has a gun under his jacket.
In Act One of any story, we always have to fulfill five promises: the character, the voice, the world, the problem, and the event that kicks off the story. Here’s a breakdown of the five promises as they apply to this episode.
Character: The main character in our story is Jessica Fletcher, a retired school teacher who is now a mystery author. She often stumbles across real life murders and uses her mystery-writing skills to solve them.
Voice: As with movies, this show does not have a voice per se but a mood. The opening credits help to set that mood by showing a montage of scenes from different episodes of the show interspersed with clips of Jessica at her typewriter. The music is light and upbeat, starting with a tinkling piano and followed by a full orchestra, including bouncy tubas. This music and mood are perfectly fitting for a cosy mystery.
Note that once Jessica and Amos are on the bus and the storm begins, the music changes dramatically from the upbeat piano and tubas in the opening credits to strident strings, reminiscent of the music in the movie Psycho. This is typical of Murder, She Wrote, where the opening credits set the tone for the show as a whole, but each individual episode has a unique score that captures the mood and personality of that particular story.
World: The world of “Murder Takes the Bus” is fairly limited. We have two primary locations: the bus itself, and the diner where the passengers are stranded.
Problem: The problem at the start of this episode is that the sheriff’s car has broken down and the only way Jessica and Amos can get to Portland is by bus.
Event: The bus has engine trouble and they are forced to stop at the diner.
PIVOT POINT 1: The bus driver needs to stop to check the engine. He pulls over at the Kozy Korner Kitchen and the passengers go inside to stretch their legs. Jessica forgets her book and goes back to the bus to get it. There she finds a passenger dead with a screwdriver plunged into his neck.
As I’ve mentioned in past analyses, the pivot points have two components: an external event and an internal choice. In this case, the external event is Jessica finding Stoner dead and her internal choice is to tell Amos, who is a sheriff after all (even though this is not his jurisdiction). Jessica thinks it’s obvious that one of the people on the bus must be the murderer and tells Amos as much.
ACT 2: This is the part of the mystery where we compile the clues and try to put the puzzle pieces together. We learn the identity of the victim (Gilbert Stoner) and that he had just been released from prison. Jessica says she remembers Stoner’s name from her research. He was part of a bank robbery where at least one of the three robbers was apprehended and an innocent bystander was killed.
SUPPORTING CAST: At this point, we also meet our cast of supporting characters. Each of the characters introduces themselves and says where they were at the time of the murder.
Kent and Miriam Radford: Kent is a math professor who is fascinated by statistics. Miriam is a librarian. Kent claims to have been playing an arcade game when the murder happened and Miriam was in the diner the whole time.
Cyrus Sleffingwel: He is an older gentleman and a retired postal worker. Like Miriam, he has been in the main dining room of the diner the whole time.
Steve and Jane Pascal: Steve is a computer programmer traveling with his wife, Jane, who is expecting. He says he was outside on the payphone at the time of the crime, but Jessica says she saw him through the window, having an argument with Stoner on the bus.
Joe Downing: He says he is captain of a fishing boat and claims to have been at the bar having a drink during the murder.
Carey Drayson: This is the man who boarded the bus from the broken down car. He says he is a jewelry salesman and he carries a gun for protection because he has valuable jewels in his sample case.
Ben Gibbons: He is the bus driver and he says he was fixing the engine. He adds that he left his toolbox on the bus so anyone could have taken a screwdriver and used it to kill Stoner.
After the introductions, Jessica pulls out a photo that she found with the dead man and says Steve Pascal bears a striking resemblance to one of the men in the picture. Steve refuses to reply but Jane looks at the photo and says that one of the men in it is Steve’s father who died during the heist (along with the innocent bystander). Stoner was caught and the other robber got away. Police never recovered the money.
After this discovery, Jessica begins to explore the diner and figures out that several doors lead outside so anyone could have slipped out and committed the murder. She and Amos go back to the bus where Amos notices a light blinking on the dashboard. That light is for a damper switch. While Amos goes to the back of the bus to check the switch, Jessica looks around the diner to investigate the doors and finds Stoner’s open suitcase out in the rain.
MIDPOINT: Back inside the diner, Steve shares a newspaper clipping giving information about Stoner’s release. That clipping also reveals that the innocent bystander who was killed was named Julie Gibbons.
Amos makes a citizen’s arrest, saying that the driver threw the damper switch on purpose to stop the bus. It turns out that the driver is Julie Gibbons’ father. He confesses to stabbing Stoner with the screwdriver, but Jessica steps up and says that he is not the murderer. She gives proof that Stoner was already dead when Gibbons stabbed him and that he died of strangulation, not stabbing.
This midpoint is a temporary triumph because at first it appears like the murderer has been found, but soon thereafter we realize that there’s more to the case than we first expected.
ACT 2 (CONT’D): The phone lines are down but Ralph, the diner owner, says there is a CB radio in the back room. Carey goes to try to call for help, but he leaves his jewelry sample case behind. Jessica confronts him, asking why he would leave such a valuable case unattended. He reveals that he’s not a jewelry salesman, but that he works for the insurance company and his job is to recover the money that was stolen in the heist.
Jessica wonders why, if they found Stoner’s suitcase, they didn’t find his overcoat or the book he was carrying. She and Amos go back to the bus to look and find both items a few rows behind Stoner’s body. They go back into the diner.
PIVOT POINT 2: The power goes out. There’s a gunshot. When the lights come back on, Jessica rushes to the back room. Carey has been shot but is only slightly wounded. The CB radio, however, has been completely destroyed. Captain Downing helps to tie a bandage around Carey’s wounded arm.
Jessica conjectures that someone among the passengers wants to find something that Stoner had. She believes someone on the bus is the third man from the robbery. Somehow in those few minutes of darkness, Stoner’s book has disappeared.
The external event for this pivot point is the power going out and the possible killer taking Carey’s gun. The internal choice is that Jessica does not give up and continues trying to find the murderer, despite the heightened danger.
ACT 3: Amos starts to search everyone for the book and they eventually find it in Miriam’s knitting bag. Jessica examines the book and finds a key hidden in the binding. She turns and accuses Captain Downing, saying he’s not a real sailor because he used a granny knot to tie Carey’s bandage instead of a square knot.
CRISIS: Downing pulls the gun, but just as he is threatening everyone, the door blows open in the wind. Amos, Steve, and some of the others overpower Downing and take the gun. Downing admits that he had been looking for the key but insists that he did not kill Stoner.
CLIMAX: Jessica says she believes Downing. Amos was right all along when he first made a citizen’s arrest. Ben Gibbons was the killer from the very beginning. He strangled Stoner first, then stabbed him with the screwdriver later to hide his crime. Gibbons says that he didn’t mean to kill Stoner but got caught up in a rage when he confronted Stoner about his daughter’s death. He thought that by confessing to the screwdriver murder, he would draw suspicion away from himself when the coroner determined that it was death by strangulation. He reasoned that if he confessed to the stabbing, he would no longer be a suspect for the real murder.
Ending Type: This is a happy ending because Jessica wants to solve the crime, and she does indeed solve it.
DENOUEMENT: The storm clears and it’s the next morning. The police take Gibbons away and the passengers board the bus to continue on toward Portland. Jessica and Amos are getting ready to head back to Cabot Cove when Amos gets an update about the banquet. He says it was surely a shame that they missed that drawing. Jessica tries to console him but then he reveals that she’s the one who won the TV, not him.
This is a classic Murder, She Wrote ending, where we get a happy scene after the discovery of the killer, often ending with Jessica laughing at some sort of a joke.
ABOUT COZY MYSTERIES: These are among my favorite things to read. What fascinates me about this genre is that while they have to adhere to strict “rules” they are in no way formulaic. I’m always amazed at how authors manage to create variation and keep readers guessing, while still sticking to the format. Cozy mystery “rules” include:
No Death On the Page: While you can have other crimes in cozy mysteries (like robbery, blackmail, kidnapping, or fraud), murder is the most common. That said, we never see the actual murder on the page. The body is discovered after the fact and we never see any violence. (In addition to no violence, cozies also generally don’t have swearing or sex.) In the case of this episode, Jessica finds Stoner already stabbed. We don’t see the actual killing on screen.
Amateur Sleuth: The person doing the investigating is often not law enforcement, but an amateur sleuth. This person usually has some sort of special skill that makes them ideally suited to solving crimes. In the case of Murder, She Wrote, Jessica is a mystery writer so she knows how criminals think (because she has to write them).
Quirky Supporting Characters: While the amateur sleuth is usually a unique and interesting character, the supporting cast is no less fascinating. Often the supporting cast includes quirky personalities, particularly those of recurring characters (like the bumbling Amos Tupper, the witty Dr. Seth Hazlitt, and Jessica’s dopey nephew, Grady Fletcher).
Quaint Setting: Cozy mysteries typically take place in small towns or other quaint settings. You’re not going to find a cozy mystery set in a gritty city, though sometimes the sleuth might travel to other places and solve a crime on their trip.
Keep in mind, one of the challenges of cozy mysteries is what folks have lovingly come to call “Cabot Cove Syndrome.” This is the problem that when you have a small town and a lot of murders, you may eventually run out of possible murder victims (and suspects). Murder, She Wrote sidesteps this problem by alternating Cabot Cove episodes with ones where Jessica travels somewhere else for writing-related events or to visit friends and family. Yes, an inordinate number of murders still take place in that idyllic town, but they are interspersed with episodes that take place in a variety of other settings like a fancy vineyard, a luxurious cruise, or an archeological dig.
The key to cozy mysteries is that readers want some predictability while still being in suspense as to whodunnit. Readers love the quirky characters and the quaint setting, and they love following along with the sleuth, putting the pieces of the puzzle together. At the same time, they want variety. This is why cozy mysteries will play with different themes and sometimes branch out into new settings. “The same, but different” is the key to keeping cozy mysteries interesting.
Until next time, keep writing and keep being awesome!
P.S. For more info on Gabriela Pereira, the founder and instigator of DIY MFA, check out her profile page.
