Fletch (novel)

The novel introduces I. M. Fletcher, a journalist and former Marine camping on a beach watching the drug culture for a story, waiting to find the origin of a dealer's seemingly endless supply of drugs before publishing an exposé.[1]

A millionaire businessman named Alan Stanwyck approaches Fletch to hire Fletch to murder him; the man tells Fletch that he is dying of bone cancer and wants to avoid a slow, painful death and his life insurance is invalid if he kills himself. Fletch accepts $1,000 in cash to listen to the proposition. Stanwyck offers him $20,000 for the murder, and Fletch talks him up to $50,000 in an effort to see if the man is serious. He appears to be sincere, and Fletch begins investigating the man's story.

Additional pressure comes from Fletch avoiding the two attorneys chasing him for alimony for each of his ex-wives.

By interviewing Stanwyck's friends and family under a variety of pretexts, a baffled Fletch discovers Stanwyck seems to be in good health and happily married with no plausible reason to kill himself. However, Further investigation uncovers Stanwyck's affair with a high school sweetheart and plan to murder Fletch and steal his identity before flying to South America with millions in cash. Given their similar physical builds, Stanwyck intends on passing off Fletch's burned corpse as his own by staging a car crash.

Meanwhile, Fletch deduces the police are trafficking drugs on the beach. When the drug supply runs low, police appear and rough up a few vagrants, covertly passing drugs to their dealer amid the commotion.

The police chief shoots and kills Stanwyck, whom he has mistaken for Fletch. Fletch uses the ticket Stanwyck bought in his name and flies to South America with Stanwyck's money.

Because of the popularity of Fletch, many sequels (and prequels) were written involving the character. The following books were written in the Fletch series by Gregory McDonald (in the stories' chronological order):

• Fletch Won (1985)
• Fletch, Too (1986)
• Fletch and the Widow Bradley (1981)
• Fletch (1974)
• Carioca Fletch (1984)
• Confess, Fletch (1976)
• Fletch's Fortune (1978)
• Fletch's Moxie (1982)
• Fletch and the Man Who (1983)
• Son of Fletch (1993)
• Fletch Reflected (1994)

McDonald wanted the final two books (featuring Fletch's son Jack) to be spin-offs called Jack's Story and Jack and the Perfect Mirror, respectively.[2]

In Confess, Fletch, McDonald introduced another popular character, Inspector Francis Xavier Flynn, a brilliant but eccentric police detective who serves as a foil for Fletch. Flynn would go on to star in four of his own spin-off novels: Flynn (1977), The Buck Passes Flynn (1981), Flynn's In (1984), and Flynn's World (2003).

Fletch won a 1975 Edgar Allan Poe Award, for Best First Novel, from the Mystery Writers of America. The sequel, Confess, Fletch, also won an Edgar Award, for Best Paperback Original, in 1977. As Mcdonald's official website notes: "The only time a novel and its sequel won back-to-back Edgars."[2]

In 1985, the novel was loosely adapted into a comedy film, Fletch, directed by Michael Ritchie and starring Chevy Chase; the film was a critical and commercial hit, earning $59 million in revenue.

A sequel film, Fletch Lives, came out in 1989; this one used an original story instead of adapting one of McDonald's novels.

An attempt to restart or reboot the series languished in development hell for decades afterwards. Writer/director Kevin Smith was attached to the project from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s, first with an attempt to make a sequel starring Chase, then with an attempt to adapt Fletch Won, potentially to star Jason Lee or Ben Affleck. By 2003, Smith had broadened his search for a leading actor to include names such as Brad Pitt, Will Smith, Jimmy Fallon and Adam Sandler.[3] By 2006, Smith was off the project, replaced by Bill Lawrence, in what would have been his directorial debut.[4] In 2014, Jason Sudeikis was set to star in a Fletch Won film, which was planned as the first in a series,[5] but the reboot went no further than 2019.[6]

The series was finally rebooted in 2022 with Confess, Fletch, an adaptation of the novel of the same name, starring Jon Hamm and directed by Greg Mottola, which was released in September 2022.[7][8]