To my mind, it’s one of the great openings of the mystery genre: so compact, almost spare, yet full of intrigue, wit and promise. It’s Fletch, of course.Īnd those readers who haven’t read the book? I can’t believe, after reading that opening, that they’re not running straight to the nearest bookstore to look for a copy. What do you want me to do?”Įven readers who never picked it up themselves can guess the novel that begins with those punchy, pithy lines. “Is it criminal? I mean, what you want me to do?” If you decide to reject the proposition, you take the thousand dollars, go away, and never tell anyone we talked. I will give you a thousand dollars for just listening to it. “Irwin Fletcher, I have a proposition to make to you. Two someones, actually: Mcdonald and a new kind of sleuth.īut why not let those words speak for themselves? It was a fitting choice for a fond farewell, as the passage had been, years before, an introduction-a bold fanfare that announced to the mystery world that someone important had just arrived on the scene. Mcdonald wrote 26 published books over the course of a decades-long career, yet when he died last September at the age of 71, tribute after tribute turned not only to the same novel but the same excerpt to illustrate his considerable gifts as a storyteller. It’s not Gregory Mcdonald’s epitaph, but it may as well be.
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