Fletch and the Widow Bradley

Irwin Maurice "Fletch" Fletcher is at a high-end hotel with a wallet filled with $25,000 in thousand dollar bills.  He found the wallet and decided to return it to the rightful owner.  The wallet had no ID but did have a key for the hotel and the name James St. E. Crandall.  Though he called the room and explained that he had the money, Mr. Crandall never arrived to receive the money.  Fletch, using an alias, informed the hotel manager and sought a home address so he could return the money.  The manager was quite amazed, but could provide no information.  "We will inform the police, Mr. Armistad."  Fletch agreed that was the thing to do and left.  While trying to track down Mr. Crandall, his editor called to say he was fired.

"What did I do?"

Fletch had submitted a financial story - he normally worked sports, but the financial reporter has a broken back - in which he quoted a man who had been dead for a year.  Fletch was absolutely certain that the memos he had reviewed with the company treasurer were initialed by the dead man in the last few weeks.  Something wasn't right and he intended to find out what.  Even so, he was still fired.  Worse yet, the treasurer had suddenly flown to Mexico on an extended vacation.  So begins an investigation into the death of Thomas Bradley.

Despite having $25,000 in his pocket, Fletch romances Moxie Mooney on a shoestring budget.  Moxie, daughter of the acclaimed actor Freddy Mooney, is Fletch's on-again off-again love interest.  As Fletch is unemployed, she wants him to take up acting in her latest play, In Love.  It has nude scenes, but her current lead actor has thick thighs and no charm.  Fletch declines.

While seeking to understand why he was deceived by the company treasurer, Fletch interviews the Widow Bradley, the Bradleys' adult children, neighbors, other employees, Bradley's sister in New York, and more besides.  In many of these conversations, Fletch offers an alias and a bogus profession; he is a rather good actor.

Many of the exchanges are quite comical or just bizarre.  He's entirely unflappable and usually has a quirky reply to questions.  He often disarms those he is interviewing by offering information in an outrageous way.

I suspect I read this book before as I figured out the solution long before Fletch suspected.  Then again, the solution is ho-hum in our modern world, but would have been astonishing when the novel was written (1981).  A friend had read all the Fletch novels and passed several to me back in the 1980s.

A good read, but not as good as either Fletch or Confess, Fletch.  Fun and quick book.