Book Details
| Title: | Fletch | |
| Author: | Gregory Mcdonald | |
| Times Read: | 1 | |
| Last Read: | 09.16.24 |
Other Books Read By This Author (4)
- Confess, Fletch
- Fletch and the Widow Bradley
- Fletch's Fortune
- Fletch's Moxie
| Date Read | Note |
| 09.16.24 | Matt Colville mentioned liking this series which put it in my mind a little while ago, then Neal Stephenson's new book was delayed a month so i figured I'd give this a try. I liked it quite a bit. It reminded me of the few other pulp books I've read from Hard Case Crime except better written. I suppose I don't have much experience in this genre outside of the 2 authors I follow but I did read the first Travis McGee book (The Deep Blue Good-by) which I guess was a decade before this but had a similar vibe in that the main character slept with a lot of women and always had an upper hand. The thing that stuck out most with this book for me was how much of it was dialogue. Pretty much the first half of the book is just dialogue, mostly unattributed. Yet I could always follow who was saying what and piecing together what was happening made for great active reading. The second half reverts to more typical prose style, i guess because not everything could be explained via talking to someone and we read some of the character's reportage in format, but there's still quite a bit of dialogue and it's very well written. The character seems like a reporter's power fantasy so I'm guessing that's what Mcdonald was prior to this but this was also back when being an investigative reporter was like a real job. It made me want to rewatch the movie. It's funny how as a kid the thing I loved about the movie was all these disguises and identities that Fletch had, the poster even showcased this and Chevy Chase was great at that stuff, but in the book it's like a throwaway thing that Fletch mostly does on the phone. The storyline of drugs on the beach is also much more present in the book than I remember in the movie but that could just be a failing of my childhood memory. That case drives the end of the book though so I'm curious how they resolved things in the movie. Overall, I liked it enough to buy the rest of them. It was a fun, quick read that I kind of had the benefit of half-remembering the story. The second in the series is Confess, Fletch which I just watched Jon Hamm do a couple years ago so that will be fresher in mind, then after that I'll get some non-adapted Fletch stories to enjoy which I'm looking forward to. |
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