Carioca Fletch

Six weeks after Fletch left California with $3 million in cash, he is immersing himself in Brazilian culture.  While having drinks in the afternoon with his girlfriend, Laura, and a poet, Marilia, he spots Joan Stanwyk, widow of Alan Stanwyk and the source of the $3 million.  No sooner has he avoided her than an old woman accosts him, claiming he is Janio Baretto.  He speaks virtually no Portuguese, so he understands little of what she says.  Laura translates, explaining that Fletch is the reincarnation of her husband, Janio, and he must reveal who murdered him 47 years ago.  Though he views this as ludicrous, Laura warns that he won't rest until he finds his murderer.

It is Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, a time when people go crazy.  As predicted, Fletch suffers insomnia and cannot rest for the duration of Carnival.  He spends most of the time trying to avoid the various Baretto relatives who follow him with demands of solving his murder.  He is conscripted into the adventures of the idle rich, a quartet of young men known as the Tap Dancers.  By this means, Fletch discovers what it means to be Carioca, a native of Rio de Janeiro.

More travelogue than mystery, Fletch is along for the ride.  He spends most of the time complaining that he doesn't understand the culture of Brazil or why he should be expected to solve a murder from long before he was born.  The greatest failing of the book is that it is not Fletch.  Sure, he looks like Fletch and he has the same backstory as Fletch, but he has a completely new personality.  Where Fletch is usually out making things happen, learning what he can, playing aces that the reader doesn't see until the climax, this Fletch let's himself get dragged around and waits to be struck across the face, literally!  The book takes place between Fletch and Confess, Fletch, the two best books of the series.

Skip this one.  Not only was Fletch so unlike himself as to seem a different character, the travelogue was more of a warning to avoid Rio de Janeiro than an advertisement to visit.  I don't think that was the intent, which further diminishes the novel.