Gregory Mcdonald Books in Order

A college student's suicide becomes the center of a novel examining rational choice and institutional coldness. Set around the Ivy League, the story questions the social pressures and values that can make lives feel dehumanized.

While investigating drug trafficking undercover at a beach, reporter Fletch receives an extraordinary offer from businessman Alan Stanwyk: kill him for money. Intrigued by the proposal, Fletch investigates what lies behind the supposedly straightforward arrangement.

Searching Boston for stolen paintings, Fletch discovers a dead woman in his apartment and becomes a murder suspect. He must untangle the killing while dealing with Inspector Flynn and the complications surrounding his fiancee's family.

Boston detective Francis Xavier Flynn witnesses a passenger plane explode over the harbor. Unconvinced by a group's claim of responsibility or the FBI's approach, he undertakes his own investigation with help from family and acquaintances.

Federal agents pressure Fletch into spying at a journalists' convention under threat of tax-evasion charges. When a newspaper tycoon is murdered there, the hotel full of reporters becomes a gathering of potential suspects.

Advice columnist Mark Edwards exchanges letters with readers, family, editors, and his publisher. His private and public replies reveal conflicting attitudes to romance, sex, and everyday grievances as his own personal life complicates his opinions.

An embarrassing newspaper story puts Fletch's job in jeopardy and raises questions about a supposedly dead executive. Documents bear Tom Bradley's signature, yet his widow keeps his ashes, leaving Fletch to investigate the contradiction.

These two kidnapping stories follow an ambassador's son abducted en route to a California amusement park and an orphaned British aristocrat seized in New York. Political crises and wartime displacement complicate the kidnappers' intended schemes.

When Steve Peterman is stabbed during a live broadcast, actress Moxie Mooney becomes the chief suspect. Fletch takes her to Key West, but other Hollywood figures follow, turning their retreat into another crowded field of suspects.

Francis Xavier Flynn investigates mysterious deliveries of enormous sums to residents of American towns. As the unexplained payments spread to the Pentagon, he faces presidential pressure to identify the source before the economy is destabilized.

Fletch joins Governor Caxton Wheeler's presidential campaign as a press representative, unsure what the job requires. A woman's death outside their hotel draws him into investigating a series of killings while managing reporters and campaign demands.

Enjoying life in Rio before Carnival, Fletch encounters an elderly woman who believes he is her husband's reincarnation. Her request that he solve the man's death sends him through the city's crowded streets searching for answers.

Summoned to a secluded country club, Inspector Flynn discovers that powerful members expect him to investigate a congressman's death discreetly. Their insistence on secrecy becomes more dangerous as further deaths interrupt his work.

New reporter Fletch is assigned to cover an attorney's museum donation, only for the attorney to be murdered before their interview. Reassigned to another story, Fletch continues digging into both scandals despite his editor's resistance.

Orphaned during the Second World War, a young British duke is sent to America for protection. His adventures there bring encounters with an unfamiliar society and become a satirical exploration of the country's national character.

Mcdonald collects his Boston Globe articles on American life between 1966 and 1973. Reportage, encounters, and observations portray an era of cultural and political upheaval through the people and events that shaped his journalistic education.

A wedding invitation from the father Fletch believed dead sends him and Barbara to Kenya for their honeymoon. A corpse at the airport and his father's continued absence turn the journey into a troubling personal mystery.

Jazz pianist David MacFarlane hosts a wedding at his Tennessee farm, bringing together friends separated for decades. Their reunion exposes disappointments, generational tensions, and competing ideas about art, relationships, and the changes in American life.

Inspired by Shakespeare's stages of life, these stories, sketches, and a poem follow people from Columbia Falls, Maine. Couples, a soldier, and a doctor consider love, aging, suffering, and the meaning of their experiences.

Janet Twombly leaves the prospect of marriage to a clergyman and falls for jazz musician David MacFarlane. Their conflicting expectations about adventure and domestic life unfold amid travel, drinking, and the world of performance.

Living in poverty beside a dump, young Native American father Rafael accepts a fatal role in a snuff film to provide for his family. The days before the appointment expose the desperation surrounding his decision.

Retired to a Tennessee farm, Fletch is confronted by escaped convicts, including a young man claiming to be his son. Investigating that claim draws him toward a dangerous group of white supremacists in Alabama.

Fletch's son Jack helps a former lover investigate threats against her future father-in-law, an inventor of a perfect mirror. A fatal laboratory explosion escalates the danger, drawing Jack and Fletch into a suspicious family's affairs.

Southern charmer Skylar Whitfield becomes the main suspect in a beauty queen's murder and struggles to provide an alibi. As further killings strike her family, his visiting Yankee cousin discovers unexpected abilities beneath Skylar's easygoing exterior.

Visiting wealthy relatives in the North, Skylar finds himself blamed when valuable jewelry disappears. The murder of a thirteen-year-old girl forces him to investigate quickly, exposing trouble beneath the household's cultivated respectability.

Inspector Flynn faces a brutal attack on his daughter's friend, a racially biased colleague, and threats to his police position. Meanwhile, his intelligence handler demands an investigation into the blackmail of a Harvard professor.

Drawing on his Boston Globe reporting, Mcdonald revisits the people and upheavals of the 1960s. Interviews and firsthand accounts range from musicians and artists to Vietnam and the turmoil surrounding the 1968 Democratic convention.