The sixth [Lovejoy] mystery ( )

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2132126.html

This is a reasonably good illustration of both the strengths and weaknesses of the Lovejoy books. On the plus side, Gash actually uses both Lovejoy's home setting in East Anglia, for the first quarter of the book, and then a richly imagined Venice where he becomes part of an industrial scale forgery operation, the details of the manufacturing fake antiques outlined in all their loving complexity. On the downside, women continue to throw themselves at Lovejoy for no apparent reason, he continues to treat them abominably, and the actual forgery plan is baroque to far beyond any point of plausibility, and the supposedly comic ending is almost identical to that of The Vatican Rip, published three years earlier. I think those who don't know the Lovejoy novels could take this as a fair sample of what they are like. ( )

Lovejoy attends a secret professionals-only antiques auction and is mystified and offended that his client would be taken in by the fake painting being offered, and worse, bids high enough to win it. When the client is murdered so soon after the auction, it's clear that someone didn't want him to have the fake. Lovejoy is pulled into a family business that sends him to Venice looking for the source of the fake artwork.

This was my first Lovejoy novel, though I've seen a few episodes of the t.v. series. There are good points here- Lovejoy is self-deprecating but full of insider information about antiques and how to make forgeries (something he dabbles in himself) and he makes some pointed observations about human behavior. He's also incredibly mysaginistic and has zero morals. What didn't work for me was the whole grand plan towards the end, as it was too difficult to follow all those minute movements the author was describing. Not a bad story and I have another Lovejoy on the shelf to try. ( )

dreadful