Book Riot: "The Author Must Die: TV Detectives Saving Writers From Themselves"

- May 12, 2020

THE AUTHOR MUST DIE: TV DETECTIVES SAVING WRITERS FROM THEMSELVES

Eileen Gonzalez

May 10, 2020

There’s a whole lot of crime shows, but only so many types of crime. So if you watch as many of these shows as I do, you eventually notice some commonalities. For example, there’s always the Let’s Play With ESP episode (“Sixth Sense,” Hart to Hart; all of Psych), the Check Out This Cool New Tech episode (“A Virtual Murder,” Murder, She Wrote; “It’s Only a Game,” Simon & Simon), and so forth.

And then there’s the type of episode that’s most relevant to this site: The Author Must Die. These feature a writer who, well-intentioned or otherwise, writes a book so damaging that they end up on someone’s hit list. (Sometimes, the book is only a smokescreen for a different motive.) I decided to collect as many of this type of episode as I could find.

THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. “THE PIECES OF FATE AFFAIR”
(FEBRUARY 24, 1967)

Yes, this is a spy show and not a detective show, but it’s my favorite, so in it goes. The Man from U.N.C.L.E. is actually about two men who have dedicated their lives to protecting the world from mad scientists, would-be dictators, and a disturbing number of women who get off on torturing people. In this episode, a teacher writes a book based on some diaries she happened to stumble upon. The problem? The diaries belonged to a Thrush agent (Thrush being U.N.C.L.E.’s sworn enemies). Thrush has her shot, giving her amnesia and making it more difficult for our heroes to recover the diaries.

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