I will also note that I picked up on the television mystery program Castle when it was in it's seventh (of eight) seasons, getting the DVDs from the library. It's a silly romantic romp, fluff mostly. But the premise is that a mystery writer is able to tag along with the police (he eventually becomes a private investigator) and when they have any kind of a reference to a recognizable plot (and they plan a lot of the episodes to do this) he ends up with some line about it. I saw a repeat last weekend, when they realize the premise was traded murders. "It's like Strangers on a Train - you know, the Hitchcock movie, though I prefer the Patricia Highsmith original novel. . . " and they have him playing poker with various living mystery writers playing themselves. He refers to lots of mystery writers, so their producers and writers had to be keeping track of the genre.