Gregory Mcdonald

When a wealthy California industrialist tells apparent beach bum I. M. Fletcher that he wants to be murdered, the undercover journalist investigates the businessman's private life. Winner of the Edgar Award. Reprint.

Fletch

Patrick Book

Plenty here that hasn’t aged well, but set that aside and it’s a very good time, a hell of a premise, and airtight execution.

When the famous journalist and private investigator witnesses a murder at the Nairobi airport, Fletch and his new wife begin a routine search for clues and find themselves assisting an expedition for a lost Roman city. Reprint. 20,000 first printing.

Fletch, Too

There’s plenty here that’s probably not worth touching on at all, but it was also mildly/mostly predictable.

Gregory McDonald

Chronicles Fletch's first case during his days as a rookie reporter assigned to cover the society page, when a publicity story about a wealthy criminal lawyer's donation to the local art museum prompts a murder. Reprint. 20,000 first printing.

Fletch Won

Gotta be one of my favourites on the series.

Lane Hokanson

Okay, so from a dashing news reporter/detective standpoint, this is a delightful read. 
The dialogue is witty, the characters charming, and you really get the fun of double-talking Fletch.

However, this was very clearly written in the 70s, which means that the titular character spends a significant portion of the beginning chapters calling a coworker a bitch to her face, and includes a fair amount of misogyny and insensitivity.

Fletch, investigative reporter extraordinaire, can't be bothered with deadlines or expense-account budgets when it comes to getting his story. Working undercover at the beach to dig up a drug-trafficking scheme for his next blockbuster piece, Fletch is invited into a much deeper narrative. Alan Stanwyk, CEO of Collins Aviation and all-around family man, mistakes the reporter for a strung-out vagabond and asks him for a favor: kill him and escape to Brazil with $50,000. Intrigued, Fletch can't help but dig into this suspicious deal he's being offered. Dodging the shady beach police as his case begins to break open, and with his temperamental editor Clara pushing for his article, he soon discovers that Stanwyk has a lot to hide and this plan is anything but what it seems.

Chris Aldrich

Review originally published at BoffoSocko.com

The book that started it all!

I'd originally read this sometime around 1988 after seeing the Warner Bros. feature film of the same name. It's not quite as over-the-top as the comedy of the film and the humor is a little sharper and wrier.

For the most part, the plotline of the text is nearly identical to that of the film with a few exceptions mostly relating to names of characters and casting (warning: spoilers follow):

The Collins family has been renamed Boyd, likely so as not to run afoul of the name of author Joan Collins.
Fletch's editors Clara and Frank are concatenated into the character of just Frank.
Fletch's beach girlfriend Bobbi doesn't exist in the film, likely to focus more on Joan.
Montgomery is a younger high-school aged student with more social ties than the Gummy of the film.
Stanwyk is not involved in the drug trade and his death at the hands of the Chief of Police is motivated by a different bit of plot. He also has an additional local paramour. His character and motivations are much better delineated in the book and several characters backing this up were missing from the film.
Much of the shennanigans of the film was added there and didn't exist in the book, though almost all of the motivating comedy and sense of humor is surely there.
Large chunks of dialogue from the film are drawn almost directly from the book.
The film is obviously a bit more cinematic and kinetic with Fletch doing much more movement, travel, and even chase scenes to make things in the film move along, while the book is a bit more balanced and even realistic.
Certainly there are many other differences, but this covers the broadest spectrum.

In this motivating text for the remainder of the series, Fletch is drawn as a very clear-cut and incredibly interesting character with a fantastic sense of morality and humor. Of the parts of the series I've read thus far, this is definitely one of my favorites, second only perhaps to Confess, Fletch.

Here the cat-and-mouse-game between Fletch and Joan is better delineated and the relationship between Fletch and Stanwyk's father is quirkier and more interesting.

If you enjoyed the movie (and even if you didn't), you're sure to appreciate this as fiction, particularly with Mcdonald's ability to paint a picture with words and write story through character.

A brief note on the physical text

This is assuredly an optical character recognition scanned version of the original text. There are a dozen or so obvious typos that didn't get fixed. There are more than several places where a temporal change in the plot occurs, but the additional line returns that were originally included to indicate the break are now missing. This can make reading portion a bit annoying. The quality control of the typesetting of the e-book text could certainly have been much better.

After a heck of a week at the News-Tribune with only a few minor blunders, Fletch is finally getting married to his blushing bride, Barbara. As the small gathering of friends and family converge on the gusty bluff for the ceremony, Fletch is handed a curious envelope by a mustached stranger that contains something almost unbelievable-a letter from his supposedly dead father, inviting him and his new wife to Africa for a visit. More than just a little curious, Fletch convinces the skeptical Barbara to forgo the skiing adventure they had planned to find the father he's never known. But upon their arrival in Nairobi, just as the hunt begins for the elusive Fletch Senior, a murder threatens to derail the trip before they even leave the airport.

The plot opens up just days after we left Fletch in Fletch Won as we follow Fletch and his new bride Barbara on a honeymoon neither of them anticipated taking. It took much longer than I would have liked to get into the first few chapters, and never really got moving along even when it seemed like something interesting could happen. 

I really can't believe I had the patience to make it through to the end. There was a minor twist at the bitter end which was poorly foreshadowed and a bit too predictable. There was no real mystery at all and definitely no "detective" work or journalistic probing which usually moves the plot in Fletch books along. I would almost suspect that the long-time editor of the series died and no one else could reign the writer in to produce something more compelling.

I kept wondering where the plot was going and why I should keep carrying. So far, of the 4 I've read in the series, this was, by far, the least gripping book in the series. The dialogue was poorly attributed, if at all, which made reading and understanding things even more of a chore. It also wasn't as sharp or witty as usual and characters are "off" and unsympathetic. The plot was just generally flat and didn't pay off despite what could have been an interesting twist with Fletch witnessing a murder well before I would have anticipated as the end of the first act.

I'm hoping that though it was the second in the chronological story timeline of the Fletch canon, the fact that it was one of the last written means that Mcdonald was just getting tired of the formula and trying to close out the series in some stilted way. I still have higher hopes for the others remaining on my list.

In an odd way, the title was interesting from both a character standpoint as well as it being a follow up to Fletch Won.

Fletch

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