Books: Carioca Fletch By Gregory McDonald (1984)

"Fletch’s trip to Brazil wasn’t exactly planned (set a few weeks after the events of Fletch). But it’s Carnival time in Rio and he has plenty of money, thanks to a little arrangement made stateside. And it took him no time to hook up with the luscious Laura Soares. Fletch is beginning to relax, just a little. But between the American widow who seems to be following Fletch and the Brazilian widow who’s fingered Fletch as her long-dead husband, he suddenly doesn’t have much time to enjoy the present or even get a wink of sleep. A nearly fifty -year-old unsolved murder, a more recent suicide, an inconvenient heart attack–somehow Fletch is connected to all of them and one of those connections might just shorten his own life. From Rio to Bahia and back again, at the height of Carnival, Fletch has to keep moving or get stopped cold."

I’m not sure how to categorize 1984’s Carioca Fletch (the seventh book in the series, but which takes place after the events of 1974’s Fletch, and thus falls fifth within the chronology). Much like Fletch Too, it comes off like Fletch has a Rio vacation adventure than a murder mystery. So it’s more a travelogue with some comedic overtones, some  social commentary and history of the Carnival added on. I think after 1976’s Confess, Fletch and 1978’s Fletch’s Fortune, McDonald was running out of more things to say about Fletch, which was why he tried the first prequel book, 1981’s Fletch and the Widow Bradley, to see if there was something there. He would write two more direct sequels in 1982 and 1983 before releasing  the two prequels that would effectively end the series for a few years. He would return to the character (somewhat) with 1993’s Son of Fletch and 1994’s Fletch Reflected, but they were intended as spin-offs called Jack's Story and Jack and the Perfect Mirror, respectively, and were not designed to focus on the Fletch character -however his publisher threatened to renege on contracts if McDonald did not agree to use the iconical name "Fletch" in the titles.  

Anyways, Gregory McDonald could’ve written this book and not included Fletch, but it’s clear that the author wanted to write a story about Brazil, about Rio and Carnival and Fletch just happens to be there, though the final line in the 1974 novel is about Fletch going to Rio, it just took McDonald ten years to write that adventure. I did read that McDonald waited to tell this story until he could actually spend time in Brazil to capture it correctly, but it still seems weird how un-Fletch this book really is.

Not sure it’s the best novel of the nine, but it’s still an interesting tale.

Books: Fletch By Gregory McDonald (1974)

“Fletch is undercover, posing ‘as a down-and-out beach bum among the drug-ridden human wreckage of a sunny California beach.’ Millionaire industrialist Alan Stanwyck, unaware that Fletch is merely posing as a derelict, approaches him with a bizarre offer: the man tells Fletch that he is dying of bone cancer and wants to avoid a slow, painful death. Fletch accepts $1000 in cash to listen to the man's proposition; the man offers him $20,000 for the murder, and Fletch talks him up to $50,000 in an effort to see if the man is serious. He appears to be sincere, and Fletch begins investigating the man's story in between investigating the drug story on the beach and hiding from the two attorneys after him for alimony for each of his ex-wives.”

Fletch is the actual first book in the series, and the winner of the Edgar Award, but is chronologically the fourth book. As noted before, a lot of Mcdonald’s book is told through dialogue, which flows smoothly, and can be less daunting for readers who don't favor over long descriptive passages; this style sometimes comprises whole chapters, which is nice as well. But, in a couple of spots, as I discovered in the three prequel novels, I think Mcdonald revels too much in this sort of info-dumping prose –so much, that they begin to stretch the believability of the set pieces. Yes, McDonald writes I.M Fletcher with supermodel good looks -thin, handsome, tanned (when not barging in on people at posh clubs, the character spends a lot of time shirtless, in shorts, and barefooted), and maybe people feel comfortable enough to talk to confident, good-looking people like this, but these folks fork over a lot of personal and intimate information to a complete stranger way too easily. Still, maybe McDonald the journalist encountered this during his years at the Boston Globe, so maybe this comes off as fact.

It’s also clear that this novel is coming from the pulp detective genre, where 1985’s Fletch Won and 1986’s Fletch, Too were seemly penned in the style of the 1985 movie version, which cleaned up the character and situations considerably. In this book, Fletch is more of a cynical anti-hero, who thrives on chaos, than the smooth talking, sort of likable, disguise wearing version of the character that Chevy Chase played (which was a more “loose” version; the plot is basically the same, but the script did take some liberties). Here, in this early book, he's more of an all-round douche, especially to his two ex-wives (Barbara and Linda) and to Frank Jaffe, his editor. He also openly hates Clara Snow, his boss (and love interest of Jaffe) and insults her anytime he can –insults that would get him fired today.

One of the other liberties the movie version took was the sub-plot dealing with a 15-year-old runaway girl named Bobbi, who is turning tricks for heroin and is shacked up with Fletch (who, by the way, says he’s 29 now, up from 24 in Fletch Won. A lot happens to him in five years!) while he’s undercover trying to find out who’s dealing drugs to folks like Bobbi. Their relationship is not explicitly sexual, but it's implied in a few places, particularly when Fletch tells Jaffe, that he'll do anything for his story. I can see why this was dropped from the film version. 

Overall, this is a good book, smart, dark, and overly sure of itself. While McDonald next published Confess, Fletch in 1976, in 1984 he published Carioca, Fletch which is set between the two. That's coming up next.