Collection - Gregory McDonald [Fletch & Flynn] - complete series

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FLETCH SERIES

Investigative reporter I.M. Fletcher, who hates his given names of Irwin Maurice, and thusly goes by "Fletch" (and can you blame him?) isn't technically a P.I. by avocation. So what's he doing here? Well, when the writing's this fast, sharp and funny, we're too busy laughing to bother with technicalities.

Fletch, at least when we initially meet him, is a hotshot LA-based newspaper reporter beset by a hypertense and demanding editor, two ex-wives hungry for alimony (although arguably hungrier for Fletch himself), and a coterie of military men determined to award Fletch a Bronze Star he doesn't want. While trying to duck all these menaces, Fletch stumbles across a seemingly successful businessman who wants to pay Fletch to murder him.

In Fletch (1974), the first published novel (although it's actually fourth in the chronology – more on that later), Mcdonald manages to balance an intricately and tightly plotted mystery with often howlingly funny dialogue. The book manages to come up with several neat surprises -- not least of which is the ending -- and gives several P.I. cliches a much-needed kick in the pants. (One running gag has Fletch completely unable to remember the complicated multisyllabic alias he gave himself on a spur-of-the-moment whim, so it gets more and more unlikely each time he hauls it out – and no-one seems to notice.) But while Fletch is a sleuth who seems to take absolutely nothing seriously, he nevertheless seems absolutely intent on getting to the bottom of the mystery presented to him. He's a guy with every bit of the wit, resource and style of, say, Spenser or Jim Rockford – it just so happens that Fletch doesn't have a P.I. license.

FLYNN SERIES

"Inspector" Flynn is just the cover identify for a mysterious spy believed dead by most players in the espionage game. Comfortably ensconced in Boston with his poet wife and their five children, Flynn makes almost no effort to sustain his pretense, so that even his slow-witted partner can pick up the anomalies of a man who takes off from work five times to attend his mother's funeral and twice for appendix removal. Flynn pursues three puzzles simultaneously: the nailing to a tree of the ear of his daughter's wrestler boyfriend, a bizarre pattern of harassment directed at an aging but once well-respected Harvard humanities professor, and the odd arrest record of a rising police star who somehow manages to place the bracelets only on minorities and people of color. None of these cases requires Flynn to display any particular brilliance, insight or skills derived from his true career in intelligence work. The insular Flynn moves at his own speed in a way that's hard to take seriously in a post–September 11 world, where the notion of a trained and valuable asset being pampered rather than utilized is jarring. While his commitment to his family makes him sympathetic, Flynn is not well served here by a plot that flirts with serious intellectual issues without developing them.