Almanac of Story Tellers: Gregory Mcdonald

Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, in podcasts, and in books. 

Today is a story of February 15th

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    It is the 46th day of the year, leaving 319 days remaining in 2023.

   

    On this date in 1937, the novelist Gregory Mcdonald was born.

    He told his stories in scintillating and rugged dialogue, spoken by characters with wit and a roguish charm. The stories were mysteries, mostly, but also character sketches, adventures, and musical tales.

    His career as a writer could be considered a reversal of many biographies. Working as a high school teacher in 1964, he wrote Running Scared, a novel about a college student's suicide. He used this to obtain a reporting job at the Boston Globe, where he worked for seven years.

    He returned to novels in 1974, penning Fletch, a ribald tale about drugs, sex, and murder on the police beat. It was a hit, winning the Edgar Award for Best First Novel from the Mystery Writers of America. He followed that with Confess, Fletch in 1976.

    That also won an Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original, becoming the first time a novel and its sequel won back-to-back awards.

 

A selection
 of Mcdonald's books
in my library

  Fletch soon was adapted for the movie screen, with Chevy Chase in the leading role. Mcdonald went on to write nine novels about Irwin Maurice Fletcher -- who as a journalist, investigator and cad, used the byline I.M. Fletcher (get it?) -- along with four  books about a spinoff character, Inspector Francis Xavier Flynn (who somehow happens to be the only inspector in the entire Boston Police Department).

    In all, Mcdonald wrote 26 books, including Love Among the Mashed Potatoes, about a male advice columnist in the 1970s; the Times Squared Quartet, four books about time that were published out of sequence; and the Skylar series, about the cultural differences between the South and the North in the United States.

    Mcdonald died in 2008.