# 3 The Grail Tree (©1979)
Genre: Mystery
Location: England
In his third adventure, The Grail Tree, another Crime Club Choice, Lovejoy is asked by Reverend Henry Swan to authenticate the Holy Grail. He decides something of value must be at stake when Swan's longboat blows up with the reverend aboard. The killers have not only blown up an old man who believes beautiful objects are sanctified by use, a sentiment Lovejoy shares, but they have also maliciously poured acid over antique medallions--an offense against reason from the point of view of Lovejoy and his associates. Lovejoy deduces who is involved, gathers incriminating evidence, blackmails the criminal conspirators, and ends up in a violent showdown in a castle museum--a Galileo pendulum up against a flintlock amid fireworks. He rips a woman's dress down the back, batters her murderous companions, and roughs up some bully-boys he suspects of vandalism: "I heard one of them move suddenly forward, but he caught his shin on my heel and took a nasty tumble. It was quite accidental. Worse still his hand got trodden on as I stepped to one side." Amid such aggressive activities, he is also engaged in training a new assistant in the mysteries of his trade and avoiding the police who want either a scapegoat or an informant. Antique dealers and aristocrats, here and throughout Gash's novels, are dismissed with disdain. Bearing names such as Alvin Honkworth, they are incapable of distinguishing between "a priceless Sung dynasty imperial jade butterfly and reinforced concrete"; they are duped by sloppy forgers passing off clearly modern scrawl as ancient documents and have no appreciation for the poverty and passion that compelled artisans.
Another Lovejoy gripe that emerges in The Grail Tree is his detestation of fresh air and the rigors of outdoor life. He prefers smoky towns and dim antique shops to "lurking around in reeds." When a young lady admires the countryside, Lovejoy dismisses it as "obnoxious," because not "man-made," and eulogizes instead the toil and struggle of the impoverished that produced true beauty. He finds beauty not in "a bit of dirt and a blade of grass" but in "an old viaduct" because "If mankind made it by his own gnarled hands, it has love in every crack. And love's all there is." For Lovejoy, true love is loving craftsmanship, "not a casual glimpse of a posh field or a bored cow."
Lovejoy is also contemptuous of "bratty" youngsters, though his soft heart shows through as he gives them rides on a donkey he inherits by default, shares candy with them, and helps their mothers provide for them, perhaps because they, like Lovejoy, are free spirits, desperate to escape the restraints of convention and of the adult world. For a similar reason, Lovejoy also feels a camaraderie with wild birds and feeds them expensive tidbits whenever he can. At the close of the novel, trapped by his young female assistant who moves in with him as the price for eventually handing over the prized Grail, Lovejoy notes, "You can't beat a woman for trickery. I don't think they'll ever learn to be honest and fair-minded, like me," just as he has plotted to end the affair by secretly arranging for the girl's unsuspecting mother to pay a visit.
These first three books point the direction that the rest of the series takes. In large part they are satiric spoofs on the glittering, greedy, and glitzy world of antiques: the pretensions, the hypocrisy, the cons, and the rip-offs. Lovejoy, who, oddly enough, seems to have joined the priesthood for a short while at some distant point in his life, has authored a little-known but monumental work on antiques, one that betrays secrets he now regrets revealing. In The Grail Tree he asserts, "Antiques, women and survival are my only interests. It sounds simple, but you just try putting them in the right order." When it comes to antiques, Lovejoy is willing to sacrifice all else. When someone destroys a genuine article, a white rage takes hold of him and he plots retribution. He even rhapsodizes about valuable furnishings while making violent love or fighting a foe: "Even as Jimmo kicked at me while we tumbled scrappily among the furniture I knew it was a memorable piece . . . 1785. Wheezing with the chest pain I got to my knees a second before Jimmo and managed to kick him. There was one almighty crack. For a terrible instant I thought it was the chair, but it was only Jimmo's bone, thank God."
Another Lovejoy gripe that emerges in The Grail Tree is his detestation of fresh air and the rigors of outdoor life. He prefers smoky towns and dim antique shops to "lurking around in reeds." When a young lady admires the countryside, Lovejoy dismisses it as "obnoxious," because not "man-made," and eulogizes instead the toil and struggle of the impoverished that produced true beauty. He finds beauty not in "a bit of dirt and a blade of grass" but in "an old viaduct" because "If mankind made it by his own gnarled hands, it has love in every crack. And love's all there is." For Lovejoy, true love is loving craftsmanship, "not a casual glimpse of a posh field or a bored cow."
Lovejoy is also contemptuous of "bratty" youngsters, though his soft heart shows through as he gives them rides on a donkey he inherits by default, shares candy with them, and helps their mothers provide for them, perhaps because they, like Lovejoy, are free spirits, desperate to escape the restraints of convention and of the adult world. For a similar reason, Lovejoy also feels a camaraderie with wild birds and feeds them expensive tidbits whenever he can. At the close of the novel, trapped by his young female assistant who moves in with him as the price for eventually handing over the prized Grail, Lovejoy notes, "You can't beat a woman for trickery. I don't think they'll ever learn to be honest and fair-minded, like me," just as he has plotted to end the affair by secretly arranging for the girl's unsuspecting mother to pay a visit.
These first three books point the direction that the rest of the series takes. In large part they are satiric spoofs on the glittering, greedy, and glitzy world of antiques: the pretensions, the hypocrisy, the cons, and the rip-offs. Lovejoy, who, oddly enough, seems to have joined the priesthood for a short while at some distant point in his life, has authored a little-known but monumental work on antiques, one that betrays secrets he now regrets revealing. In The Grail Tree he asserts, "Antiques, women and survival are my only interests. It sounds simple, but you just try putting them in the right order." When it comes to antiques, Lovejoy is willing to sacrifice all else. When someone destroys a genuine article, a white rage takes hold of him and he plots retribution. He even rhapsodizes about valuable furnishings while making violent love or fighting a foe: "Even as Jimmo kicked at me while we tumbled scrappily among the furniture I knew it was a memorable piece . . . 1785. Wheezing with the chest pain I got to my knees a second before Jimmo and managed to kick him. There was one almighty crack. For a terrible instant I thought it was the chair, but it was only Jimmo's bone, thank God."
Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 276: British Mystery and Thriller Writers Since 1960. A Bruccoli Clark Layman Book. Edited by Gina Macdonald, Nicholls State University. Gale Group, 2003. pp. 160-174.
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