Fletch (novel)

Novel by Gregory Mcdonald

Fletch is a 1974 mystery novel by Gregory Mcdonald, the first in a series featuring the character Irwin Maurice Fletcher.

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. 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.

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. By 2006, Smith was off the project, replaced by Bill Lawrence, in what would have been his directorial debut. In 2014, Jason Sudeikis was set to star in a Fletch Won film, which was planned as the first in a series, but the reboot went no further than 2019. 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.