"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.
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