Flynn's World: A Novel [Hardcover]

Gregory Mcdonald (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 24, 2003

From one of the world’s best-selling and most entertaining mystery writers comes a beguiling new novel starring the beloved Inspector Flynn.

Boston police inspector Francis Xavier Flynn is in for a tough day. He has hardly gotten a wink of sleep, due to a marathon bout of detective work. His daughter, Jenny, drags him to a cemetery, where her best friend is nailed to a tree by his ear. Unfortunately, the boy refuses to reveal who did it or why. Next, Flynn hears that his incompetent sidekick, Grover, has convinced the police chief to fire him—again. And then Flynn finds out that a local cop has developed a tendency to pursue and arrest the wrong people—based only on the color of their skin. Dealing with the infuriating, befuddled, and intolerant Boston police force is enough to keep him more than busy, but someone even more powerful than the chief of police wants Flynn to forget everything else and concentrate on discovering who is threatening a certain Harvard professor.

With startling wit, deft characterization, and insightful social commentary, Flynn’s World is a masterpiece of mystery and a complete joy to read.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Edgar winner Mcdonald (Fletch, etc.) resurrects minor series character Francis Xavier Flynn, after almost two decades, in a lightweight comic quasi-mystery. "Inspector" Flynn is just the cover identify for a mysterious spy believed dead by most players in the espionage game. Comfortably ensconced in Boston with his poet wife and their five children, Flynn makes almost no effort to sustain his pretense, so that even his slow-witted partner can pick up the anomalies of a man who takes off from work five times to attend his mother's funeral and twice for appendix removal. Flynn pursues three puzzles simultaneously: the nailing to a tree of the ear of his daughter's wrestler boyfriend, a bizarre pattern of harassment directed at an aging but once well-respected Harvard humanities professor, and the odd arrest record of a rising police star who somehow manages to place the bracelets only on minorities and people of color. None of these cases requires Flynn to display any particular brilliance, insight or skills derived from his true career in intelligence work. The insular Flynn moves at his own speed in a way that's hard to take seriously in a post-September 11 world, where the notion of a trained and valuable asset being pampered rather than utilized is jarring. While his commitment to his family makes him sympathetic, Flynn is not well served here by a plot that flirts with serious intellectual issues without developing them.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Boston police inspector Francis Xavier Flynn is in the hot seat over his extended absences from work, his three appendectomies, and the five funerals he's attended for his dear departed mother. What the bureaucrats in the Boston Police Department don't know is that Flynn isn't really a cop; he's a spy using the BPD as a cover, and sometimes spies need extended leaves from their day jobs. While he fights office politics, Flynn also investigates the blackmail of a senior Harvard professor with a background in Middle Eastern studies. And then there's that little matter of his daughter's boyfriend and why he turned up in a cemetery with his ear nailed to a tree. Flynn, ever the student of life's whimsical, often painful turns, solves both cases through equal applications of wit, deduction, and empathy. Flynn has aged well in the 20 years since his last appearance in print. Two-time Edgar winner Mcdonald's humor, pacing, and erudite dialogue are as fresh as ever. Welcome back, Flynn. Wes Lukowsky
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Pantheon; 1 edition (June 24, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375422366
• ISBN-13: 978-0375422362
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #937,661 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Funny, well written, but uncomfortable aftertaste, September 11, 2003

By 

booksforabuck "BooksForABuck" (Long Beach, CA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Flynn's World: A Novel (Hardcover)

Francis Flynn, Boston's only police Inspector anticipates another ordinary day--setting a judge straight on a police frame, getting fired by the police Captain, and involving himself with his family. He's surprised when his daughter rousts him to rescue her boyfriend--whose ear has been nailed to a tree. The boyfriend refuses to tell who nailed him and quits the wrestling team leaving Flynn with a mystery. A second mystery soon comes foward. A Harvard professor, once a star but now out of style, has been receiving death threats. Flynn is directed to look into it by his spy-boss.

Along with hapless sidekick Grover (call me Richard), Flynn learns that Harvard has gone downhill, descending into internal dissension and value-free studies. The aging professor's old-fashioned beliefs that certain ideas are better, that certain (well educated) people make better leaders, and that professors have a mission to teach are considered elitist and outdated. Especially by one assistant professor who openly mocks the aging don while letting his own children grow up in a value free and hazardous environment. Flynn's large family, by contrast, is composed of well behaved and nearly perfect children.

Gregory Mcdonald's writing frequently left me laughing out loud. Flynn's wry comments and sly digs are appealing and certainly anyone would like to have Flynn's perfect family rather than the horrible life of the assistant professor (whose wife, unsurprisingly, is a child psychologist). Still, I think Mcdonald carried his message farther than the story allowed. Age-tested concepts and ideas may be fine, but then again, infant sacrifice, female mutilation, and witch-burning are age-tested ideas that survived for generations. Age and survival cannot be the test of an idea. Since Flynn is naturally perfect, he could certainly be our Platonic philosopher-king but, unfortunately, Flynn is fiction.

Mcdonald tried to tone down his message a little by introducing a neo-nazi cop--apparently intent on showing that Flynn (and Mcdonald) are not the elitist white males that the young professor would make them. Perhaps Flynn's contempt for 'Grover' is also intended to demonstrate a general contempt for the less educated, regardless of race. I found, however, that Flynn's treatment of his assistant was cruel and undeserved as Grover had his eyes opened by spending time with the professor and developing a real humanity--something that Flynn doesn't seem to share.

It's hard not to enjoy a Gregory Mcdonald book. His writing is very strong and compelling. His wit sparkles. It's hard to put FLYNN'S WORLD down--I read it in a single sitting despite the lateness of the hour. But it left an uncomfortable aftertaste.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars McDonald's World is Getting a Little Smaller, July 23, 2003

By 

Patrick Burnett "penngos" (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Flynn's World: A Novel (Hardcover)

When Francis Xavier Flynn was introduced in the pages of "Confess, Fletch", it was apparent that Gregory McDonald's success with "Fletch" wasn't a fluke. The author's ability to create smart, funny and believable characters was notable and refreshing, even with a character as unbelievable as Flynn, a mysterious Inspector for the Boston Police Department who also worked for the shadowy No Name organization, a global agency that specializes in the quiet resolution of threats to world peace.

McDonald went on to write three subsequent novels starring the intrepid Flynn, his world expanded to include his musical family, his assistant and friend Cocky, who is partially paralyzed and his incompetent partner "Grover". Each of these novels is funny, thoughtful and sharp. It didn't take long to realize, however, that the Flynn novels were forums for McDonald to pontificate, to offer his own opinions on the state of the world. They were no less enjoyable for this.

Now, many years after the last Flynn novel, "Flynn's In", McDonald has produced "Flynn's World", an oration on the evils of television, isolation and ignorance. Flynn ponders the identity of the person or persons who nailed his daughter's classmate's ear to a tree and of the person or persons who send threatening notes to helpless old Harvard professors. In typical style, Flynn employs his sons to spy on the school chum and putters around the Harvard campus, asking impertinent questions and making leaps of deductive logic that would make Sherlock Holmes tap his foot in annoyance.

Far from being one of Flynn's standard, entertaining romps, this fourth outing is a ponderous, pedantic drudge. In the intervening years while Gregory McDonald was off creating the dull "Skylar" and the flavorless "Son of Fletch" books (not to mention the awful works of "literature" he foisted on an unsuspecting public), he seems to have forgotten how to write for someone truly clever, not merely bombastic. Flynn now seems older, world-weary. This might be acceptable if the character had aged a dozen years in the interim, but this book takes place only a few weeks after the first one, "Flynn".

The writing is not as crisp as a fan might expect, the mysteries are not solvable by any means outside the brain of Flynn himself, and, once solved, are not satisfying. They are incredible and vaguely unsettling. And they ripple with meaning, not with a wink but with a bonk upon the head.

I am disappointed in this book, as I waited many months for its release, only to find that it is substandard McDonald, when I had expected a triumphant return. Why else wait so long before releasing a book with a hero so long dormant, if not to dazzle? Sadly, I remain undazzled.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great insight, witty writing, August 28, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Flynn's World: A Novel (Hardcover)

Those of us who live in the academic world may be discomforted (or cheered, as I was) by how well the author skewers much of the high-sounding foolishness that currently infests the ivory tower. As a work of detective fiction this book isn't at the same level as the magnificent "Flynn" or "Flynn's Inn." At the same time, it isn't as far-fetched as "The Buck Passes Flynn," which was probably the low point of the four Flynn novels. Perhaps the writing isn't quite as witty as these earlier novels, and the plot is not as involved, but the tradeoff is more than acceptable, because two hallmarks of the Flynn character -- his wisdom and his empathy -- have increased as the author (and all of us) have mellowed with the years. I particularly enjoyed the gentler treatment of "Grover," who is still an annoying twerp, but every man has a history, as Flynn would say.