Murder, She Wrote - Tough Guys Don't Die
Murder Mystery Monday takes us back to the most famous mystery writer of Cabot Cove. "Tough Guys Don't Die" introduced hardboiled private detective Harry McGraw (Jerry Orbach) as the partner of the PI Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) hired to look into an unsolved case. Although the pair don't initially hit it off (with Harry unnecessarily breaking into her house and, like so many others, offering Jessica advice to stay out of a real criminal investigations), eventually McGraw accepts Jessica's help and would become a recurring character on the show and even earn his own (short-lived) spin-off.
The McGraw character leans heavy into the cliched classic private eye, complete with the classic office and Girl Friday, even getting beat up more than once while sticking his nose into the case of his partner's murder. It's far from my favorite of the show's recurring characters, but Orbach seems to be enjoying himself. Paul Winfield has a small role as the usual local cop who Jessica learns about the case from, although he he gets far less on-screen time with Harry being the one who Jessica ends up working with instead.
More about misdirection than a complicated mystery, Jessica and Harry both separately look into the three different cases that Harry's partner was investigating at the time of his murder. Neither Jessica's cold case (solved mostly off-camera) or the movements of an argumentative developer (Alex Rocco) prove to be connected to the murder leaving only a secret in the background of a magazine publisher (Barbara Babcock) as the true motive for the crime which is tipped off far earlier than Jessica discovers (at least for those with a keen ear).
- Title: Murder, She Wrote - Tough Guys Don't Die
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