10 Smartest TV Detectives
3. Jessica Fletcher (Murder, She Wrote)
The detective who solves crimes in downtime from their full time job is somewhat of a cliche now, but Murder, She Wrote’s Jessica Fletcher pretty much invented it. To crack cases as a hobby is one thing, but to do so while holding down a career as a best selling novelist is undeniably impressive.
Fletcher gets results simply by being a pest. Wherever she ends up, trouble seems to follow her. A murder takes place, and she takes it upon herself to get to the bottom of the matter. The sheer coincidence of this makes her somewhat suspect, but we’ll give her the benefit of the doubt.
Fletcher lives in a world of utterly incompetent police. While vigilantism shouldn’t be condoned, it’s fair to say that, without her intervention, a whole lot of murderers would have gotten away scott free. From piecing together the clues to sweating out a confession, Fletcher is capable of seeing a case from inception to conviction - and all the while maintaining her daily word count.
She even has a Guinness World Record to her name for the sheer number of cases she’s taken on in an amateur capacity. How she hasn’t been headhunted by law enforcement is the real mystery.