Fletch's Fortune

By: Gregory Mcdonald

Narrated by: Dan John Miller

Fletch, as unbridled as ever and still living the good life in Italy on his ill-gotten fortune, gets a surprising visit from two surly FBI agents. The pair offers him a deal: either he attend the American Journalism Alliance convention and work as an undercover spy for them, or be shipped back to headquarters and face jail time for tax evasion.

Reluctantly agreeing to the scheme, he catches a red-eye flight back to the States. But just as rubber hits tarmac in Virginia, news breaks on a murder at the convention. The victim - a newspaper tycoon and former employer of I. M. Fletch - was no stranger to enemies. And at a hotel full of reporters who'd all had their dealings with the tyrannical leader, everyone's a suspect.

©2018 Gregory Mcdonald (P)2018 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Fletch’s crazy insights continue

Fletch attends a journalists conference in rural Virginia. At first he believes he is being coerced into going by the CIA but comes to doubt that. The conference is kicked off by the murder of its president who is stabbed in the back with a scissors. The victim has many enemies among the attendees. Fletch figures out who did the deed in his usual relaxed way. The other characters add a lot of interest as well and there are references to prior stories on the series.

Not bad

A simple A to Z affair with an easy plot. Sardonic humor can be fun.

Awesome

It’s cozy, dark, sexy, mysterious, badass, and relevant. Great read / listen. WAY BETTER THAN THE MOVIES

Dated but still fun

The Fletch and Flynn books were a bit of a rage in my group of friends, especially since Flynn was based in our area. Fifty years later, the books are still fun, if rather out of date. I now prefer the Flynn series. He is a somewhat more believable protagonist than Fletch, even if his organization is fantastical.

Let’s Do the Time Warp. Again.

An ok mystery, set in a galaxy far, far away, when newspapers were taken seriously, and reporters were assumed to be objective (when someone suggests they’re not, one scribe admits she’d never thought about it). I even heard the term “male chauvinist” for the first time in decades.

Yes, it’s the 70’s. And no, it’s not fair to pillory a book for reflecting the times in which it was written. Nevertheless, it's hard to get too worked up about the dubious practices of a newspaper baron in the midst of so much enlightened moral posturing by characters who spend most of their time doing whatever they want whenever they want (hey, it’s the 70’s, right? And the 80’s. And the 90’s…). Add another straw dog in the form of two idiotic CIA agents, a smug defense of then-newfangled advocacy journalism, and a final revelation of key details Fletch knew all along, and we have our first disappointment in the Fletch saga.

It’s too bad, because the story starts out with so much promise. Still, you’ve got Gregory Mcdonald’s trademark sense of fun throughout, as well as Dan John Miller’s panache at the mic.