Fletch Won

What I try to do with reviews at this Bookshelf blog is keep it simple and spoiler-free, and let you know whether I'd recommend you pick up a copy of what I just read. Seems to work okay. This time, a brief review of Fletch Won (Warner, 1985).



Well, here's a pleasant surprise. I've kept slogging through Gregory Mcdonald's novels despite several back-to-back losers. I figured that he completely peaked in the 1970s, but Fletch Won is not at all bad. It's not as good as the first couple of Fletch novels, nor the first Flynn book, but it's a pretty good read, and the first seventy pages are just one laugh after another. It's a very intelligent and funny book.

This is the earliest Fletch case that Mcdonald penned, with our hero being bounced from one newspaper department to another. He doesn't make a good obituary writer, for example, because of his tendency to truthfully note that some of the recently deceased never actually accomplished anything in their life. So he gets moved to the society page, ideally to interview a wealthy tycoon who plans to make a huge donation to an area museum, only the tycoon gets murdered in the newspaper's parking lot, and nobody other than the paper or the museum seems to know a thing about this donation.

Fletch begins investigating, angering the paper's actual crime reporter, and finds himself shot at, doused with gin, and stripped naked, all before noon. He's supposed to be getting married in a couple of days, and somebody else at the paper has an idea that he should be looking into an escort agency that wrangled its way into free advertising on the paper's sports page.

It's a dense, ridiculous book with lots of competing plot threads jamming against each other. It's so much more fun than the dull Carioca and Moxie, which each had just a single, tawdry plot that the inventive, decisive Fletch of the earliest novels could have handled in his sleep. Our hero is at his best when complications from every possible angle pile up. It's not always successful - the liquor store shooting isn't resolved in any satisfying way, and the climax requires the police to move very, very slowly so that a house of cards can be coherently constructed from all the random aces that Fletch has been given - but it's a pretty fun book overall. It gave me hope - dashed, as it turned out - that the next couple would also entertain. Recommended.

Flynn's In

What I try to do with reviews at this Bookshelf blog is keep it simple and spoiler-free, and let you know whether I'd recommend you pick up a copy of what I just read. Seems to work okay. This time, a brief review of Flynn's In (Mysterious Press, 1984).



I don't think there's any getting around it anymore. Gregory Mcdonald's powers definitely waned as his career continued.

Flynn's In is the second novel to star Mcdonald's other recurring character, Boston Inspector Francis X. Flynn, and while the character and his family and his interactions with his short-tempered, unhappy Sergeant "Grover" Whelan are as amusing as ever, this time the plot isn't very fun at all. It's only when Flynn is distracted, by telephone, to deal with his regular players that things really spark. The supporting cast this time out really requires some work.

In this novel, Flynn is summoned out of state on a secret assignment by the police commissioner. He arrives at an exclusive, hidden resort for the rich and powerful, called simply The Rod and Hunt Club, where one of the members has apparently killed himself in a shooting accident. Flynn quickly determines that he was killed elsewhere and his body moved. The club has decided to cover up a murder, and they've got the full support of the police in this isolated community. Flynn has merely been called in so the members can mete out their own justice. It won't come as any surprise to learn that somebody's got their own ideas of justice for the club.

The problems are just huge with this one. In an unhappy echo of Fletch's Moxie, Mcdonald has populated a cast of eccentric, unpleasant idiots who mostly speak with a single voice. Beyond "the old nudist" and "the cross-dressing judge," I couldn't tell any of these jerks apart. Mcdonald also made the remarkably bad choice of making Flynn by far the most intelligent and witty member of his cast. It really just becomes tedious and aggravating to continue. As the body count grows, it's impossible to tell whether Mcdonald is parodying a plot that was boring when Christie ran it into the ground, or if he's just plain lazy. Funny in places, particularly where Flynn's children are concerned, but a drag otherwise. Not recommended.

Fletch's Moxie

What I try to do with reviews at this Bookshelf blog is keep it simple and spoiler-free, and let you know whether I'd recommend you pick up a copy of what I just read. Seems to work okay. This time, a brief review of Fletch's Moxie (Warner, 1982).



I'm afraid that, as I saw with the downward quality trajectory of Harry Kemelman, the 1970s were kinder to Gregory Mcdonald than the 1980s. I'd already been very disappointed with Carioca Fletch; 1982's Fletch's Moxie is nowhere as bad, but it is bloated and very dull for much of its page count.

This time out, Fletch, still claiming to be writing the biography of some obscure painter, is in Florida on the set of what sounds like a terrible motion picture. The star, a childhood flame, is suspected of the murder of her manager. Fletch, Moxie and her father decamp to Key West, and the Hollywood glitterati follow them, leading to chaos and race riots as events spiral out of control.

It sounds like the recipe for a story that I would enjoy greatly, but it's done with no passion for the plot, and a lot of really obnoxious characters. Moxie doesn't do anything to inspire Fletch's loyalty in this book, and there are passages where the prurience level gets so ridiculous that it all seems like the author is working out some squicky fantasies.

To be fair, Mcdonald very nearly pulls it off at the end, with a very satisfying resolution to the murder and a very clever twist showing how Fletch was also working on another mystery that I wasn't sure was actually something I was supposed to be following. Maybe this is a case of a very good writer getting distracted; I hope that it doesn't mean subsequent adventures are as tawdry and navel-gazing as this one. Not recommended.

Flynn

What I try to do with reviews at this Bookshelf blog is keep it simple and spoiler-free, and let you know whether I'd recommend you pick up a copy of what I just read. Seems to work okay. This time, a brief review of Flynn (Avon, 1977).



Inspector Francis X. Flynn was introduced in the second Fletch novel by Gregory Mcdonald and he got a book of his own the next year. He's a terrific character, a laconic, sarcastic weirdo with a musical family, who treats the theft of his son's violin as every bit as important as the passenger plane that explodes almost atop his house as it's lifting off from Boston's airport.

With a federal judge on board along with several other notable celebrities, there could be any number of motives for the mass murder, including a local cult that preaches killing as the only way to curb the planet's population, but the real question for Inspector Flynn is who is this detective, and why does the captain assign him to work with the feds on the case when the Boston police department does not actually recognize the rank of inspector?

This is just a hugely fun book. I love Flynn's relationship with his suffering sergeant. At one point, Flynn sends his teenage sons undercover to do a little work for him, and sends the sergeant to chase them around to make it look good. It goes exactly as Flynn planned it, but not at all like how his sergeant did. His recounting of what happened is just about the funniest thing I've read in months. Highly recommended.

Confess, Fletch

What I try to do with reviews at this Bookshelf blog is keep it simple and spoiler-free, and let you know whether I'd recommend you pick up a copy of what I just read. Seems to work okay. This time, a brief review of Confess, Fletch (1976).



I have to tell you, following Gregory Mcdonald's Fletch series has proven more of an interesting challenge than I thought it would be. McDonald did not write the series in chronological order, and I love that. The first of the novels, written, turned out to be the fourth in the series. The second written, Confess, Fletch, is the sixth. I picked up a hardcover omnibus that contains stories four, five and six - these would be the books written first, seventh and second. You with me so far, or did you drop out to follow something sensible?

Well, book five - slash - seven, Carioca Fletch, was a huge disappointment. Set in Brazil after Fletch found himself incredibly wealthy at the end of story four - slash - one, it seemed to be a case of the character caught up in other peoples' events and never affecting the outcome of anything himself. Fortunately, Confess, Fletch proved to be a massive treat, almost as good as Fletch's introduction.

In this story, Fletch returns to the States claiming to be researching a painter for an art history biography, but finds a body in the apartment that he's rented. This would be a pain in the neck had Fletch caught any fictional detective to give him, and his unlikely story, the once-over, but he has the great misfortune of having a real bulldog called Frances Xavier Flynn assigned to the case. Flynn would prove popular enough to get his own series of four novels. Watching the cat and mouse game that these two play is a complete joy, because Fletch doesn't want anybody to know the real reason he's come to Boston to talk about paintings, or why he left California in such a rush two years previously.

I really love the way that Mcdonald structures this story. Fletch has a very complicated scheme in mind, and it requires lining up an awful lot of pieces to make it work. Mcdonald carefully and deliberately puts all these pieces together without giving anything away, or letting the audience know what the hell Fletch is up to. The payoffs are beautiful in every way, and with an adversary like Flynn opposing him, he really doesn't get off easy. I enjoyed this tremendously and recommend it wholeheartedly.

Fletch

What I try to do with reviews at this Bookshelf blog is keep it simple and spoiler-free, and let you know whether I'd recommend you pick up a copy of what I just read. Seems to work okay. This time, a brief review of Fletch (Bobbs-Merrill, 1974).



I can only conclude that either none of my friends have read this book, or that none of my friends have read a darn thing I've ever written. I have written, repeatedly, that one of the reasons I love John Wagner's Robo-Hunter comic so much is the way that writer keeps ratcheting up the chaos, piling a teetering, inverted pyramid of plot complications on his protagonist. Reading these stories is a treat because there just seems to be no way in the world for our hero to either get out of this mess, or for the problem to get any worse. And yet the problem keeps getting more and more ridiculous and gigantic and messy. That's my favorite kind of escapist fiction.

I was aware that there was a silly Chevy Chase movie based on this novel by Gregory McDonald, and aware that people like Kevin Smith have been raving about the books, hoping to make more movies about the character, and finally got around to seeing what the fuss was about. It turns out that there are several novels in the series - I have two more, just waiting for me to finish a second read of the debut - and I was long overdue for looking into this.

Fletch, an investigative reporter in California with a disastrous personal life of debt, drugs and divorce, is deep undercover researching the drug trade on the beach when he's approached by a man about a job. He wants Fletch to murder him and flee the country. He claims that he has inoperable cancer, does not wish to suffer, and cannot take his own life because his family will lose a three million dollar insurance policy.

Fletch decides to investigate his new acquaintance's story just as the beach deal gets heavier and his two ex-wives and their lawyers start complicating matters even more. It's an amazing balancing act, watching the plot strands spiral faster and faster until McDonald puts all the banners into one hand and, masterfully, executes one of the most satisfying payoffs I've read in ages. This was one of the most fun experiences that I've ever had reading a book. Damn right I recommend it!