Three notable exceptions; "Just Another Fish Story"(self-defense), and "To The Last Will I Grapple With Thee"(suicide made to look like murder to implicate someone else) and "The Christmas Mystery" (the intended murder victim is shot in the head, but it is later announced that she has recovered).
One murder victim turned out to be blackmailing the more prominent men of her small town. But then it's implied she was using the money to anonymously support charities for orphans and widows.
The killer in the very first episode, who - oddly enough - is Jessica's very first publisher. It turns out that, years ago, he'd been framed for a crime by 3 ex-associates and imprisoned; he subsequently faked his death before his sentence was up and went on to start a new life under a new name. However, he was eventually confronted by a blackmailer, lost his temper, and killed the person right then and there. The episode goes out of its way to portray him as a genuinely-good person who made a horrible mistake rather than as your typical villain.
Asshole Victim: Almost every murder victim in the history of the show likely qualifies, with a few exceptions. There's never a case where the murderer is some brutal and heartless killer; he or she is almost always someone who the victim has wronged in some way.
By-the-Book Cop: The show had two of them. Cabot Cove's first sheriff was Amos Tupper, an honest cop and a close friend of Jessica. After he retired after the fourth season, he was replaced by Sheriff Mort Metzger, a former NYPD detective who took the job after mistakenly believing that the town was a peaceful place. Still, he does his job well, considering.
Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Ethan Cragg (Claude Akins), who appeared often enough in the first season to be considered a recurring character, disappears without explanation at the start of season two, his role as crusty Cabot Cove resident filled by Dr. Seth Hazlitt.
Creator Breakdown: Reversed, in-universe. The reason Jessica started writing her mysteries in the first place was to give herself an outlet to work through her grief over her husband's death.
In a later episode, Seth expresses concern that she's investing too much of her time in her books and missing out on life.
Crossover: With Magnum, P.I.. The crossover episode was a two parter, with the first part on Magnum, P.I. and the second part was continued on the subsequent episode of Murder, She Wrote.
Doom Magnet: Is Jessica Fletcher visiting your town or home? One of three things is going to happen. You'll either be killed, accused of killing, or be revealed as a killer.
Eagle Eye Detection: Jessica has a more realistic version of this trope as her attention to minute details are usually what catch the killer. In one example, Jessica notices that one character has been hiding his hand in his pocket since the murder because a dog bit him after he committed it.
Friend on the Force: Jessica acquires a large number of friendly detectives as the seasons go on, not to mention her friendships with the Cabot Cove sheriffs.
Identical Grandson: Jessica has a British cousin named Emma, also played by Angela Lansbury. In the episode "Runs in the Family", only Emma was featured, with Jessica not appearing at all, and Emma proved to be a rather good sleuth herself.
Instrument of Murder: "Death to a Jazz Beat", offered an inversion; a jazz clarinetist who was planning on firing his back-up band before signing a huge recording contract was murdered by a poisoned clarinet reed.
Law of Inverse Fertility: Jessica and her husband Frank were childless; in the pilot, when speaking to a potential new love interest (who later turns out to be the killer), she explains that "We were never blessed in that way," suggesting that they wanted children but couldn't have them for whatever reason.
Magazine Decay: In-Universe example: a publishing magnate buys up a literary magazine called Literary Lines and adds Maxim-esque pictorals of bikini-clad ladies. This doesn't sit well with Jessica, who is under contract to have her first short story published in the magazine.
Murder Mystery Magnet: People drop dead around Jessica everywhere she goes. Everywhere. It's creepy.
It's been calculated that Cabot Cove has a murder rate of 86 per 1000; by comparison, the most murderous city in the world, Caracas, has a murder rate of 1.1 per 1000. That's not counting the murders that happen outside Cabot Cove...
In some years, more people were murdered in Cabot Cove on the show than were murdered in the entire state of Maine in Real Life.
Lampshaded in one episode when another character tells Jessica, "If murder were a disease, you'd be contagious."
Lampshaded again by Sheriff Metzger, a former New York cop, who after a year as the sheriff of Cabot Cove, asks Jessica, "Just what the hell's wrong with this town?"
The MAD parody of the series is named "Murder, She Hopes." Jessica is overjoyed every time she learns that a new murder has taken place.
Put on a Bus: The original sheriff retired when Tom Bosley left the show.
Nephewism: Jessica had no children, but many nieces and nephews. Grady Fletcher was the only repeater among them.
In one episode, it's explained that his parents died when he was little and Jessica and Frank raised him, thus giving him a reason to be a repeater nephew.
Jessica's other repeating relative was a niece and nephew in law played by Genie Francis and Jeff Conaway who had a continuing thread about wanting to be in the entertainment business.
Obfuscating Stupidity: Jessica doesn't hesitate to play up her "little old lady" image to get information out of people. In a few instances she even played a drunken floozy with surprising skill, which may be justified since Jessica has a history of theater in her background.
Platonic Life Partners: Jessica and Seth have this dynamic. They obviously care about each, but there's little to no indication of anything romantic between them.
Poorly Disguised Pilot: In everything but intent. When Angela Lansbury started to tire of the pace of a weekly network show, a strategy was devised that would allow the network to do a full season without Lansbury having to do a full season. Slightly more than half of the episodes of the season would be full adventures of Jessica Fletcher. The remainder would be Poorly Disguised Pilots, for which Lansbury, as Fletcher, would film bookend sequences, explaining the new character we'd be seeing for the next hour — sometimes "real-world" acquaintances of Fletcher, sometimes Jessica's own fictional characters. They weren't really intended to Spin-off any of the characters (although if any were exceptionally successful, why not?)
Script Swap: Done in one episode with an aging actor whose memory is so bad he has to rely on the teleprompter. While this looks like an Engineered Public Confession, it is actually a ploy on Jessica Fletcher's part to trick the real killer into exposing themselves.
Sherlock Holmes: In the pilot, a man dressed as The Great Detective is the murder victim.
In "Tough Guys Don't Die", the victim is a P.I. named Archie Miles.
"Prediction: Murder" has a housekeeper character named Greta Olsson.
Strictly Formula: Mostly played stright, though it should be noted that this was subverted from time to time. Earlier seasons, strangely enough, played with the formula more than later ones.
Sympathetic Murderer: Frequently killing the Asshole Victim. Sometimes it's self-defense or accidental, in one case of the latter Jessica agreed to keep quiet about solving the murder because revealing the "killers" would have caused harm to an innocent person. Some of the murderers lose their sympathy when they try to frame someone else or try to kill Jessica to cover it up, though.
Technology Marches On: During the run of the show Jessica goes from typing manuscripts on a typewriter to using a computer as reflected in updated opening credits. The final movie shows that Jessica has even begun using a laptop.
"The Murder of Sherlock Holmes" becomes an Unintentional Period Piece thanks to this trope. When Jessica encounters the two young thugs in the alley, she threatens to call the police, but one of the thugs points out that it would be impossible for her to do so because she couldn't possibly have a phone in her purse.
Trans Atlantic Equivalent: More than a few people have mentioned that Jessica Fletcher could be considered an American Miss Marple. Especially hilarious, as Angela Lansbury has played both. In fact, the opening of "The Murder of Sherlock Holmes" is practically a direct lift from the opening of The Mirror Crack'd, the Miss Marple film Lansbury appeared in.
This even happens with recurring guest stars. Ron Masak, before joining the cast as Sheriff Mort Metzger, appeared in two earlier episodes (the first playing a cop in New York!).
William Windom played one of the guilty party in "Funeral at Fifty-Mile" before appearing as Dr. Seth Hazlitt in the second season.
Madlyn Rhue, before playing Cabot Cove's librarian in later seasons, appeared earlier as a victim's widow in "Seal of the Confessional".
Another interesting example is "Murder on Madison Avenue": Firstly, after having played Jonathan Quayle Higgins in the aforementioned Cross Over with Magnum, P.I., John Hillerman appears in this episode as a completely different character, to the likely confusion of longtime viewers. Secondly, Barbara Babcock's character (her fourth on MSW, fifth if you count The Law and Harry McGraw) is murdered by her assistant (played by Hallie Foote), but in an interesting possible Casting Gag, the next season episode "For Whom the Ball Tolls" sees Babcock and Foote together again (playing completely different characters, of course), working together on a historic preservation commitee, as if nothing had ever happened.
Leslie Nielsen appeared in the first season as the captain of a cruise ship when Jessica gets involved with a murder aboard the ship. He turned up again in season three as an old admirer of Jessica's who spots her on the street, plants a huge kiss on her lips then shortly after gets accused of murder.
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