One solution, of course, is to make the person a police officer. Another is to make the person a doctor. Another is to make the person a lawyer.
All of those professions, however, come with a shelf-life. In fact, as Sheriff Metzger points out to Jessica, police do not encounter murder as often as television suggests. Neither do doctors. A lawyer like Matlock might encounter it more but not, of course, as often as once every week. (Boston Legal, for all its flaws, makes the correct point that many lawyers don't go to court and those cases that do go to court and involve murder are high profile.)
She also has multiple reasons for getting involved. She rarely investigates just for the fun of investigating--she is willing to let the police operate if she believes they are competent--but she finds a reason if a family member is in trouble, a neighbor asks for help, a strange event occurs that puts someone she cares about in jeopardy, someone hands her information, she is a witness, she overhears a plan...
But her wide-ranging experiences and contacts means that she isn't spending every episode defending, say, her nephew Brady from a false accusation. She has multiple reasons to be in multiple places.
It's very, very smart writing--and one reason, I suggest, that Murder She Wrote was such a hit.
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