Book Details
| Title: | Fletch's Moxie | |
| Author: | Gregory Mcdonald | |
| Times Read: | 1 | |
| Last Read: | 11.14.24 |
Other Books Read By This Author (4)
- Confess, Fletch
- Fletch
- Fletch and the Widow Bradley
- Fletch's Fortune
| Date Read | Note |
| 11.14.24 | The fifth Fletch book. This one centers around a film production where the producer has been stabbed in the back while being interviewed. The prime suspect is Moxie, a love interest of Fletch introduced in the last book. I liked this one. This makes the second Fletch book that's also Mcdonald skewering some scene like he did with newspaper reporters in Fletch's Fortune. I like to believe this book was informed by his experiences around the Fletch movie getting made. Maybe that's not the case at all, just me projecting, but I like the idea. It also makes for a nicely contained mystery in the form of a rented house on Key West where all the talent from the movie flock once the murder happens and the production is put on hold. From my dissatisfaction with the previous book I'm realizing just how hard it is to come up with situation after situation where A) it makes sense that Fletch is there, B) a murder happens, and C) the book is also a comment about something else like the film industry or reporters or whatever. And all that's just the setting, there's still a murder mystery to craft on top of it. In the last book, the character of Moxie was a bit odd. I liked her a lot more here, maybe because we also meet her father which I pictured somewhere between Richard Harris and Orson Welles. Fletch is also not 100% ahead of everyone here - similar to Confess, Fletch - which makes him a tiny bit more believable at the trade-off where I think this is Fletch's most passive book. I guess he didn't do much in Fletch's Fortune either but he was listening in on everyone's rooms and putting a plan together for the CIA. Here he's mainly sitting around once everyone gets to Key West. But I don't really see that as a negative, just more human. I've also noticed the prose style has kind of flattened out as well. No more huge passages of unattributed dialogue. By book 5 we're reading for the same reason I read Michael Connelly or whatever. We just want to hang out with Fletch more. And why not? It's quite a fun hang. |
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