Like Wicked Little Letters on Friday night, Confess, Fletch also does progress a favor by replacing the white Boston Police detective Flynn with Roy Wood Jr, as "Slo-Mo" Monroe, the deadpan homicide inspector who is famous for taking forever to arrest his suspects, and another non-white actor, indeed a woman, Ayden Mayeri, as Monroe's partner Griz, another role that would've gone to a white guy by default in most movies 20 years ago.
The novel is set in Boston. I haven't read it in a long time, but it's possible the movie is even more Boston-centric than the book: key scenes have been moved to a yacht club in Gloucester, and the scenes set in the South End and Back Bay look perfect. They even got the heavy, rattling double set of glass doors entering the brownstone just right. Chevy Chase's Fletch was a Lakers fan (I don't recall that detail from the books) and they use his fandom to great effect in a Boston movie. Casting native Bostonian (and Mad Men pal) John Slattery as Fletch's old editor, Frank Jaffe, now working at a Boston paper was a nice touch.
One final note: this is the second movie I've seen recently (after Dumb Money) to be set during or after COVID lockdowns, without being about COVID. Jaffe laments that his Millenial coworkers all work remotely now, "the big babies". Paramount Plus