Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Pearlhanger



# 9 Pearlhanger (©1985)


Genre: Mystery

Location: England



Pearlhanger (1985) focuses on a scam to pass off a fake bepearled siren as a priceless heirloom. Lovejoy (and obviously his creator as well) appreciates any highly developed skill, whether it is that of a master plowman or of a master painter. A "clamorous sixth sense," "a bell" in his chest, a sudden "bong" warns Lovejoy he is in the presence of a genuine antique, and when that happens all else loses significance. "Tinker really can't see the point in actually loving antiques," Lovejoy says of his assistant, and adds, "I can't see the point in loving anything else." Lovejoy's constant complaint is restoration that removes all traces of "human warmth," of "the precious care" lavished for centuries on a "priceless" piece. As he regales readers with odd bits of knowledge ("Did you know that Confucius was a police inspector . . . And Gandhi . . . a stretcher-bearer . . . Standards are falling"), he waxes eloquent about the power of antiques. Hired by a pushy woman to find her missing husband, Lovejoy follows the man's trail from antique to antique, only to be framed at the end of the trail for a murder he did not commit. The whole chase has been a setup, with crooks using Lovejoy's reputation as a divvy to con buyers, and with cops using Lovejoy's known shadiness to lull criminals. The con games do not bother him as much as buying art for investment--a "villainy" that makes him indignant: he calls those who do so "the worst sort of criminals," for they "steal our antiques, then hold them to ransom." What disturbs Lovejoy even more, however, is the senseless murder of a dotty old woman whose séances he deplored but whose friendship he appreciated. With this motivation, he outwits crooks and cops, gets his revenge, and makes a profit, too. With the police watching his every move, he tries to substitute an obvious fake for a more clever one so the buyer, a powerful and ruthless thug, would wreak vengeance for him. Afterward his comment is predictable: "I was only after justice. Honest truth."
Lovejoy's private life in this book, as in all the others in this series, is always a mess, for he has the sensibility of a tomcat and moves from lover to lover at a heart-stopping pace. "If it weren't for women my life would be tranquility itself," he quips, and warns, "Women get to you. You have to take proper precautions because female means sly." He describes them as "aching to belt you one yet simultaneously wanting to use you in their designs." Several of them, when angered, call him a male chauvinist pig; and he definitely makes a lifestyle out of unashamedly exploiting women's attraction for him and their desire to protect or change him. He continually abuses women, not physically, but psychologically and financially. He takes their money, uses their cars, eats their food, and then makes them stand outside in the mud or rain or harsh sea air while he confers with a "pal" or passes them on to a friend when the relationship begins to bore him. His preference is for married women (particularly ones with brutish, hulking spouses), for they are more of a challenge but less of a threat, more willing to accept his eccentricities, and less shrill.
While working full-time as a practicing physician and turning out mysteries on the side, Gash was approached by the BBC about making a television series starring Ian McShane as Lovejoy. McShane had read the novels, imagined himself in the starring role, and pushed scriptwriter Ian LaFrenais to adapt the books to screen. Gash says he literally signed the contracts for the BBC Lovejoy television series "between ward rounds in a busy London hospital." The producers did not seek his assistance in the production, but they did pay him author's rights for three separate limited-run series. The first series aired in 1986, the second in 1991, and the third in 1992. The series (with more than eighty episodes) was so successful that it sent viewers back to the books and literally made Gash's fame and fortune. The series captured the setting but sanitized Lovejoy (particularly his randy sexual exploits with a continually changing cast of nubile young and middle-age women). McShane aimed for a slightly disreputable demeanor and chummy confidences (his Lovejoy confesses to shady deals and clever cons, exposes the insider tricks of his trade, and cynically comments on the way of the world) but made the television Lovejoy lovable, fairly faithful, and even honorable. Gash was most disturbed by these changes, because for him the goal of his books was to make readers grudgingly like Lovejoy in spite of his grasping, selfish nature. In an unpublished letter to Gina Macdonald, Gash contrasted the two. Instead of the "scruffy, shop-soiled article with the unruly thatch of hair, who baby-sits for a living between antiques carry-ons" and who is particularly fond of budgerigars, wild birds, and other creatures (he has a cat on occasion and a dog in Gold from Gemini), the glamorous television Lovejoy is "hygienically squeaky clean." Unencumbered by babies or pets, he is "dramatically dressed in faultless black Dakkar leather and trendy jeans, drives a Volvo instead of a derelict Austin Ruby, and knowledgeably drinks expensive wines at polo meets in Windsor among the gentry." Only the first series, for which much of the dialogue was taken verbatim from Gash's novels, includes the violence of village life and of Lovejoy. Whereas in Gold from Gemini Lovejoy ruthlessly relishes murderous revenge on a devious and grasping female who had contemptuously and maliciously killed his budgerigars, in the television series she "accidentally" falls to her death. Furthermore, the BBC series gives Lady Jane Felsham greater prominence than do the books and discreetly makes her the main love interest.
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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