From Publishers Weekly
Marked by Mcdonald's offhand humor ("I can't figure out whether Wyoming is big or just empty") and offbeat characters, the 11th Fletch story features a finale that is not so much a resolution as a deflation, like a spent balloon. Fletch's son Jack, having sold his story/expose of rightwing crazies to Global Cable News (see Son of Fletch), heads to the huge Georgia estate of billionaire inventor Chester Radleigh at the request of Shana Steufel, an old, but memorable, one-night stand of Jack's. Shana, who is engaged to one of Radleigh's sons, believes her future father-in-law's life is in danger. Jack gets a groundkeeper's job at the estate, which is run like a benevolent dictatorship. Meanwhile, Fletch pere is planning to have Jack's mother Crystal lose 400-plus pounds at a Wyoming training camp for boxers. While probing the dysfunctional Radliegh family, in which the spoiled wife and four grown children rebel in individual ways, Jack finds snakes under every rock and psyche. Then Fletch appears at the estate and triggers the sorry ending. Fletch and his newly discovered son Jack are an appealing pair in need of a better plot.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Irvin Fletcher, redoubtable antihero of the Fletch novels, has a son named Jack, who was introduced in
Son of Fletch (1993). Jack has just completed an expos{‚}e of a redneck cult--he's an investigative reporter just like Dad--when he gets a call from an old lover, Shana Steufel. She and Jack had a meaningful relationship one weekend, and now's she's going to marry the son of the billionaire inventor of a mirror that allows you to see yourself as others do. The inventor, Chester Radleigh, is eccentric and lives on a secluded estate with many family members, associates, and domestics. Shana is worried because there have been accidents lately involving Radleigh that could have been fatal. Would Jack investigate? No one on the estate is even borderline normal, and everyone has a potential motive for wanting the patriarch dead. Jack, in the guise of a summer pool hand, engages each in witty exchanges of dialogue, fraught with cryptic meaning. The Fletch novels have always offered a unique mix of suspense and cartoonish characterizations. The son of Fletch continues the family tradition.
Wes Lukowsky
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
