Murder, She Wrote: A Palette for Murder [Paperback]

Jessica Fletcher (Author), Donald Bain (Author)

Book Description

Series: Murder She Wrote | Publication Date: October 1, 1996

The sixth mystery in the series based on the popular TV program finds Jessica Fletcher vacationing in the Hamptons, where she enrolls in an art class in which a lovely young model suddenly turns up dead.

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Signet (October 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0451188209
• ISBN-13: 978-0451188205
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #498,737 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another Wonderful Book, February 15, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Murder, She Wrote: A Palette for Murder (Paperback)

Jessica is going to visit her publisher and his wife in the beautiful Hamptons. While in the Hamptons Jessica decides to take art lessons. While she is skecting an artist the artist mysteriously drops dead. Jessica checks into the case, and finds out that the case is very similar to the death of an artist a year ago. The book is pretty good, and is full of suspense. A great book for a rainy day.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Amazing Mystery, June 12, 2000

By 

Book_Freak - See all my reviews

This review is from: Murder, She Wrote: A Palette for Murder (Paperback)

Whoa! In A Palette for Murder you get to see Jessica Fletcher at her finest! This is an amzing book that anyone would love, no matter what your preference in books. Why did a young girl who was modeling for an artist studio suddenly fall over dead? And could this death somehow be connected with the murder of a reporter and the death of a young artist? Only the amazing Jessica Fletcher can uncover the truth!

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Enough Dead Bodies to Make a Zombie Movie, August 26, 2005

By 

Dennis Phillips "The Book Friar" (Bulls Gap, Tennessee USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Murder, She Wrote: A Palette for Murder (Paperback)

It seems that Jessica has a hobby we didn't know about and her pursuit of that hobby gets her into all kinds of trouble in this book. We find out early on in this book that Jessica likes to paint and she has decided to take a trip to the Hamptons, a favorite spot for artists, to take a painting class. Everything is fine until the young lady who is modeling for the budding artist's drops dead during a session. When the story hits the news, Seth Hazlitt calls from Cabot Cove just flabbergasted that Jessica has been painting pictures of naked men. The coroner rules it a heart attack but Jessica just can't believe that someone so young could die so suddenly. Of course this kind of death occurs all of the time and so the premise of the whole story is a little weak but not badly so.

Jessica starts to snoop around and when she learns that a young artist died under the same circumstances a few years before this death she really gets suspicious. She calls up her friend George Sutherland at Scotland Yard and has him check on poisons that would mimic a heart attack but that would be hard to detect. He calls her back with the notion that ricin might just be the culprit. Another weak point in this story is that Jessica just runs with the ricin theory without giving a second thought to the fact that other poisons might also fit the bill. This is partially covered by the fact that one of the players is a former East German intelligence officer who would have had access to ricin but I can't help but think that Miss Marple would have checked on the poison a little more closely. Ricin by the way comes from the Castor Oil Bean so I was right in telling my mother that she was going to kill me with that stuff.

In this book the bodies just keep piling up until there are four murder victims and Jessica is almost number five so the action is never dull. As you read along you keep wondering who is going to be next and at least one of the deaths comes as a total shock. There are also some interesting characters introduced in this book such as Frank the taxi driver and Mr. Scott the owner of the inn where Jessica is staying.

While this is a very enjoyable book, there are some flaws besides the ones mentioned above. First of all in some of these books and on TV she was J.B. Fletcher while this book and some of the others in this series refer to her as J.D. Fletcher. Mr. Bain needs to make up his mind! Another problem is that Mrs. Fletcher seems to have a problem with overweight people and takes every opportunity to make remarks about their weight. It is especially bad in this book when it comes to the former German spy but she also does it to her friends, including Seth. I've never thought of Jessica as that small minded. She also rails against smokers in this book, again due to the German character. She can rail all she wants to but Mr. Bain again needs to look toward consistency here since she never criticizes her pipe smoking Scottish friend.

Of course little points like this do not detract all that much from a well-written and interesting story and this is certainly one of those. It just bugs me no end when an author can't seem to keep his basic story straight from one book to the next. Nonetheless, as warm fuzzy mysteries go, this is another winner from the pin of Donald Bain.