Fletcher lives at 698 Candlewood Lane in the fictional town of Cabot Cove, Maine 03041. While teaching criminology at Manhattan University, she stays in Manhattan at the Penfield House Apartments, 941 West 61st St. Cabot Cove is a town of 3,560 inhabitants near the ocean. Based on the number of murders that occur in a given season of the show, the town seems to have probably one of the highest murder ratio of any town or city. This has even been remarked in the show by the town Sheriff Mort Metzger. He noted in season 5, episode 21 ("Mirror Mirror On the Wall Part 1") that this was his fifth murder in one year. Given the population of the town to be about 3000 this is a fairly high murder rate. Given the murder rate in this town, it has about the same murder rate of a town 20 times its size. This trend was noted and parodied many times.
Her travels as an author very frequently take her to places around much of the English-speaking world, which gives her writers a little more ability to stretch the character and her situations than rural New England alone would have provided. One of them takes her to Hawaii, where she shares a case with private detective (private investigator) Thomas Magnum, star of Magnum, P.I..
Fletcher was widowed from her beloved husband Frank, with no children stating that she and Frank just "weren't blessed that way" but with a seemingly endless collection of nephews, nieces, cousins, in-laws and other relatives or friends who always need her help. Especially prone to get into trouble is her nephew Grady Fletcher, who was raised for a period of time by Jessica and Frank. Grady always seemed to meet the wrong girl, until he finally married Donna several seasons into the show.
