Thursday, November 5, 2009

Musings on Gash

English 597

Wade Thompson
Dr. Hunter Hayes
November 2, 2009

A Musing On Gash’s Lovejoy
I have to say, first off, that I have never been a fan of mysteries. In fact I don’t remember the last time that I ever read one. Perhaps it was the images of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes on television that turned me off, or that infernal Agatha Christie’s Murder She Wrote which was always playing on television whenever I was a kid. The only mysteries that I can remember tolerating were Perry Mason and occasional Matlock that my parents used to enjoy and thus was forced to watch. But at the moment I cannot precisely say whether or not I have ever actually read a mystery either. Perhaps it is my ignorance which is showing at this point, and I will admit to that. I am ignorant on several subjects, and usually if I am I choose to be because of some association with said item creates a distaste in my person for such things. So this semester when I learned that we had to do group presentations in English 597 over a subject in the crime noir area, my group picked Jonathan Gash’s Lovejoy series. At the time I didn’t mind because, like the other items on the list that we had to choose from, I didn’t know anything about it, thus making it equal to everything else. However, when I soon found in my possession several books from the series, saw the cheap paperback covers, the art, and found out from my professor that it was a mystery series, I soon became worried. Lovejoy is a mystery series, for crying out loud! I thought to myself. How was I going to handle this assignment with something that I had a distaste for? How?!
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But I had agreed, along with my group mates, to do the project so I decided to look at Lovejoy with a grain of salt. Think of it as a personal challenge if you will, but I was determined to see it through. So, with a little bit of hesitation, I plunged into the series by looking at Gash’s eleventh book in the series, Moonspender. I decided that by reading one of the middle books I could get an accurate representation and feel for them, the results of which will be found the further along into this essay.
One of the first things I noticed about the series is the sense of humor that the main character, Lovejoy, has. Though he may be a confidence man in the antique industry, which I was told, Lovejoy shows the intricate world in which he lives and works. For instance, on the first page of Moonspender Lovejoy tells the reader, “The story begins where I am making love to an ancient Chinese vase, on gangster’s orders, watched by eleven point two million viewers” (Gash 1). There are two things that need to be taken into consideration when reading this line. One, the obvious deprecating
sense of humor that is seen throughout his novels, and two, the seedy associations and social network in which Lovejoy operates within. As I look at these books to figure out what benefits they may have to the reader even I, someone who has no interest in mysteries, can see the value they have.
Now, let’s talk about those values.
Going back to Moonspender we see the character Lovejoy in the utter preposterousness that is his existence as an antiques dealer, in which a large chunk of the humor in Gash’s novels is centered upon. In the beginning of the novel Lovejoy is

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selling handkerchiefs outside that are supposed to be of Irish linen (Gash 1). The disparity of the situation in which Lovejoy puts himself in portrays the humor that is inherent in his character. I say this because the very act of selling perceived “antique” handkerchiefs on the street seems all to ludicrous and the fact that he is desperate enough to attempt such an act gives it a feeling that the author is lampooning the very antique dealing industry.
This lampooning of the antique industry is one of the central values of the series, as I was told to observe by a professor, as the series, and even in this novel, tends to depict a seedier social network when it comes to antiques. For instance, as one of the main devices in the novel, Lovejoy is fixed into being a judge for an antiques show by a gangster and his thugs who are high criminals in antiques dealing (Gash 13). This leads us back to where Lovjoy begins, about judging an ancient Chinese vase (22-3). After showing his ability in judging antiques Lovejoy is brought into a scheme with the antiques hoodlum and his thugs. But it is this humor which I believe draws people to the Lovejoy series, his cockney sense of style which permeates his ever being. One of the best instances of this in the novel is when he deals with Sir John, a person whom he owes money and services (Gash 62). Though it appears at first that the lord has the upper hand in using Lovejoy for his own services, the scandalous antiques dealer informs Sir John that he has acquisitioned a fake antique. However, much to Sir John’s dismay, he won’t tell him which one is the fake, thus risking the lord’s reputation when it comes to grandiose displays of his wealth (63). It is moments like these that show off Lovejoy’s

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surliness, his ability to poke fun at those who believe themselves above him in status or station. That is why I think this novel, along with the series, does justice to the genre in that there is always a series of beats, little conflicts, that keep the story moving along at an extraordinary rate, almost as fast as any film or television show. The world of antique dealing in which Lovejoy operates, a world of scheming, conniving, conning, and even sometimes violence, is represented throughout the novel, showing a side which most people have never known. And it is through such representation that I believe Gash’s Lovejoy series gives the mystery genre a steady, comforting feeling that can always be counted on by the reader. Though it is not the type of book that I will ever read, it is, nevertheless, a series that is worthwhile, at least for a momentary sense of enjoyment. Thank you.








Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Book Review / Spend Game & The Lives of Fair Ladies

Gash, Jonathan. The Spend Game: A Riveting Story of Murder in the Antiques Trade.
Penguin Group. New York. 1980.
The Lives of Fair Ladies. Penguin Group. New York. 1992.



Gash wrote several books in the Lovejoy Mystery Series. The books reviewed in this paper are number four, The Spend Game, and number fourteen, The Lives of Fair Ladies. Both books deal with an antiques dealer named Lovejoy, who restores, fakes, and authenticates antiques. Lovejoy is something of an antique diviner. He can spot a fake sometimes without even touching the piece. He lives a fast paced live style in which he is always broke, borrowing or swapping favors for money and food. Lovejoy is something of a detective who often knows clues without realizing he knows them. The answers to a riddle can be recognized at the last possible moment of hope, pulled reluctantly from memories he does not even know he has.
Both books have a great deal of detail regarding the life of an antiques dealer, scam artist, and lover. Lovejoy manages to have sex with almost every woman he wants without developing ties and is able to get by with having his women pay for both his upkeep and his business ventures. He does it in such a way that the reader understands that if he really had the money he would do it himself. While Lovejoy seems to be an antique addict who will spend his last dollar on something he feels is genuine, Gash does not portray Lovejoy as desperate, at least in the first novel.
The mystery in Spend Game begins with the death of one of Lovejoy’s acquaintances. It is a man Lovejoy knew while serving in the military, someone who once saved his life. Because the man, Leckie, once saved Lovejoy, Lovejoy feels an in ardent amount of responsibility to find Leckie’s killer. The story progresses nicely; although, the mystery is never really hidden from the reader. We can know the killers, and their reasoning, while Gash manages to keep their quest hidden for a while. It is Gash’s treatment of female characters through the book that is interesting. The voice of Lovejoy narrates throughout the entire story and he speaks often of women in a voice that while slightly disparaging also allows the reader to understand the importance of women in his life.
Lovejoy uses phrases like “Women have this instinctive ability to judge…”(29), “That’s the trouble with women.” (115), and “They glow with chemotactic radiation. You can’t take your eyes off them.” (110). Still, even though Lovejoy praises the aspects of women, he is often brutal and abusive stating “When you’ve blacked a bird’s eye you can’t look straight at them like you normally do” (87). Further, Lovejoy is often yelling at some woman or other who never seems to mind.
In this book, women admire him, men fear him if he isn’t given the answers he is seeking because Lovejoy will quickly turn to violence saying; “I decided to start by breaking a couple of fingers, one on Nodge and then one on old George.” (90). In this early book, Gash seems to allow Lovejoy to be a lover of life, truth, antiques, and women of all ages. He speaks kindly of women of all ages, especially older women stating; “That’s why I like older women. They never make mistakes the way younger ones do.” (41).
In the end, Lovejoy manages to denounce the killers, kill a few men himself, find the valuable antique and get the woman. He is a little worse for wear but still seems to be at the top of his game. He retains agility, affection for women and a desire to right the wrongs around him.
In The Lies of Fair Ladies we can see a different Lovejoy. Gash seems to loose some of the unique quality of Lovejoy’s voice, the book is more commercial and Lovejoy has less banter with himself about women and no banter with women. He no longer uses love words when addressing the women in his life. He now calls them “stupid cow”, “dingy old crone”, “silly cow”, “stupid old mare”, and “stupid bitch”.
Lovejoy comes across as much more jaded and mean spirited. His associates are no longer just people trying to make a living, but criminal instead of misunderstood businessmen and women. The narrator is no longer light spirited and the banter (when there is some) is dark and depressed. In Spend Game Lovejoy is affected by the death of his friend but he is not brought to tears. He is beaten up but not beaten down. In The Lies of Fair Ladies, Lovejoy cries hysterically at the death of his friend and takes his beating lying down.
Most of the women Lovejoy comes across in The Lies of Fair Ladies are lesbian or bi-sexual. He longs for a typical woman yet risks everything to save Connie from certain death. Lovejoy remains a hero in this book; however, when he is allowed out of the hospital, there is no welcoming committee, no party, and no one to great him at home. He must find his own cab and then goes out looking for his friends because he is certain they are through him a hero’s party.
This book is sad on so many levels. Lovejoy trusts his partner Luna who turns out to be a traitor. He trusts Laura, who happens to be Luna’s daughter and possibly the only friend he has left (although he still feels betrayed). Connie, whom he saves, ends up with another man, and Lovejoy is left friendless, with a woman he doesn’t trust, and broke. In the end, after having sex with Laura while Luna bangs away at the door, Lovejoy exclaims; “It’s a woman’s world, and that’s not my fault.” (263).
There is a twelve year gap between the first book and the second which may account for the change in the narrator’s voice. Obviously, people change within a twelve year span. Lovejoy has become jaded, soured on people and life and bent on his criminal activities. Still, the time span aside, I much preferred the easy going, light hearted, lover of Spend Game, to the less likeable, rougher, meaner Lovejoy of The Lies of Fair Ladies”.

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Jonathan Gash Bio / Lovejoy Beginnings



Jonathan
Gash (Cockney rhyming slang for "trash" in the sense of "good-for-nothing") is the main pseudonym of John Grant, a distinguished English medical doctor who has turned out more than a mystery a year since he began publishing in 1977. The majority of his humorous and witty fictive creations focus on antique dealer and sometime investigator Lovejoy (his full name is never revealed), an unscrupulous, conniving antihero; a lecherous connoisseur of anything old, rare, beautiful, and valuable; a "divvy" who can mystically separate the genuine from the fake; a master of inspired fakery himself; and a dealer in dreams. He has highly flexible ethics and a cheeky manner as he engages in outrageous scams and counterscams in the name of justice, revenge, and a quick profit. Lovejoy is an idealist corrupted by everyday circumstances: his life is a constant quest for the rare, the exquisite, the irreplaceable; yet, he is always caught up in villainy and murder and easily imagines the worst in everyone. Through him, Gash satirizes the pleasures, pretensions, greed, and self-delusions of the antiques world and its hangers-on, from millionaire collectors to down-and-out barkers. The Lovejoy series follows a basic formula, but there is such a variety of information and experience bound up in it that each book is a new, intriguing experience. Unlike Agatha Christie, whose stories are plot-driven, Gash makes narrative voice his driving force, with Lovejoy's anecdotes about history, antiques, and human behavior, his advice, warnings, diatribes, and antics, taking precedence over story line. In the late 1990s Gash introduced a second series, with an unusual detective team that allowed him to focus on urban England and grim realism and to effectively employ his medical knowledge (the heroine is a doctor).

Jonathan Gash was born John Grant in Bolton, Lancastershire, on 30 September 1933, the son of Peter and Anne (Turner) Watson, both mill workers. He grew up in Bolton as one of a large family of boys. He married Pamela Richard, a nurse, on 19 February 1955, at age twenty-one, and they had three children: Alison May, Jacqueline Clare, and Yvonne. He attended the University of London, where he received his M.B. and B.S. in 1958, and the Royal College of Surgeons and Physicians, where he earned his M.R.C.S. and L.R.C.P. and became a member of the International College of Surgeons.

While a penniless premed and then medical student, Grant held a variety of odd jobs to pay for his education. Once he began working in the Cutler Street Antiques Market in London's East End, however, he had found a lifelong avocation. He carted around antiques and had them appraised by a real-life expert who, as Peter Gambaccini reports, became the model for Lovejoy. Gash's interest in antiques reveals itself particularly in his mysteries, where readers learn an array of information about a variety of unusual collectibles. Even British country lanes reveal "antiques," the legacy of the old Romans versus the heritage of the ancient Britons. Gash finds intriguing the idea that treasures abound everywhere, or, as he has Lovejoy point out in The Grail Tree (1979): "Right from our sinister prehistory to the weird present day, mankind's precious works are scattered in the soil, under walls, on beams, in rafters, in chests and sunken galleys, in tombs and tumuli. . . . I've seen an early Chinese black-ink jade cup used for tiddlywinks. And a beautifully preserved genuine 1751 Chelsea dish stuck under a penny plant pot out in a garden." Gash learned enough from this hands-on experience in the trade to be able to make his own forgeries (a practice he continues in order to make sure his descriptive details in his books are accurate). Unlike his characters who sell fakes as the real thing, Gash signs his creations and donates them to charity.

Once his main medical degrees were completed, Grant turned to full-time medical practice, but, while doing so, earned specialized degrees--D.Path., D.Bact., D.H.M., M.D., and D.T.M.H. He was a general practitioner in London from 1958 to 1959, a pathologist in London and Essex from 1958 to 1962, and a clinical pathologist in Hanover and Berlin from 1962 to 1965. A stint in the Medical Corps of the British Army from 1965 to 1968 earned him the rank of major.

In 1968 Grant moved to Hong Kong, where he served as head of the clinical pathology division at Queen Mary Hospital and as lecturer in the faculty of medicine of the University of Hong Kong. There he learned a great deal firsthand about tropical medicine. Grant grew to love the city and to have contempt for authors who researched their books on it from conversations in the Hong Kong Club. Grant learned Cantonese and used it in his professional dealings as physician and pathologist, and, as a result, attained a level of awareness of culture and perspectives most Westerners miss. This distance from his own culture made him quite capable of seeing through English social pretensions and of satirizing British sacred cows. He left Hong Kong in 1971 to become head of the bacteriology unit of the School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine at the University of London. He also became a member of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine.

His first work under the pseudonym by which he is best known among readers of the detective-fiction world, The Judas Pair, was published in 1977 and was, he says, an attempt to find "light relief" from medical duties. He began the Lovejoy series on a commuter train to London and from then on wrote on his lap while commuting to work and to lunch. He writes in longhand in small letters, changing the color of his ink each time he rewrites, and after four or more drafts finally turns the manuscript over to a typist before continuing revisions (up to as many as thirteen drafts). He has remarked that he finds writing both a pleasure and a game. His escape from urban drudgery was to write about a rural village, and his escape from his own medical persona was to produce a fun-loving, womanizing rogue, Lovejoy of Lovejoy Antiques, an impoverished but resilient and knowledgeable antique dealer with a flair--a nose for antiques and a nose for trouble. Through Lovejoy, Gash builds on the knowledge of antiques developed and refined as he worked his way through medical school and then developed outside the trade as an aficionado. He also works in a British literary tradition going back to Robert Greene and his tales of coney-catching. Gash, like Greene, makes his rogue lovable, and, because it is Lovejoy's narrative voice addressing readers, Gash can escape into the skin of a witty, lively character, with a short temper, few scruples, and an obsession with antiques first and women second. These consuming interests take precedence in his life to the exclusion of almost everything else.

Newgate Callendar, writing in The New York Times Book Review (19 August 1979), called Lovejoy "flawed indeed"--scrambling "for a living" and "turning a dishonest deal or two," his speech "ribald," his manner "offensive"--yet "a genuine hero . . . faithful to himself," seeking the "unattainable . . . backed by a tremendous knowledge and a rapt love for what he is doing." Writing in the same source on 29 April 1984, Callendar captured Lovejoy's essence: "always broke, always hustling, always randy, always seedy and unsavory, always resourceful . . . never an admirable character . . . always ready to forge an antique, to bend the law, to lie outrageously, always managing to justify himself by specious reasoning . . . a male chauvinist . . . [without] one redeeming characteristic," but also "a true artist" and "a visionary who loves beautiful antiques more than life itself and who knows as much about them as Bernard Berenson did about Renaissance art." In fact, Lovejoy's antiheroic nature is the key element in the series. His impromptu, informed lectures on a wide range of curiosities are, of course, another important part of the charm and attraction of the novels. These lectures reveal the author behind the series character--a man fascinated by history, the arts, and human behavior and forgiving of human foibles.

Book List

BOOKS


The Judas Pair (London: Collins, 1977; New York: Harper & Row, 1977).


Gold from Gemini (London: Collins, 1978); republished as Gold by Gemini (New York: Harper & Row, 1978).


The Grail Tree (London: Collins, 1979; New York: Harper & Row, 1979).


Spend Game (London: Collins, 1980; New Haven, Conn.: Ticknor & Fields, 1981).


The Incomer, as Graham Gaunt (London: Collins, 1981; Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1982).


The Vatican Rip (London: Collins, 1981; New Haven, Conn.: Ticknor & Fields, 1982).


Firefly Gadroon (London: Collins, 1982; New York: St. Martin's Press, 1984).


The Sleepers of Erin (London: Collins, 1983; New York: Dutton, 1983).


The Gondola Scam (London: Collins, 1984; New York: St. Martin's Press, 1984).


Pearlhanger (London: Collins, 1985; New York: St. Martin's Press, 1985).


The Tartan Ringers (London: Collins, 1986); republished as The Tartan Sell (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1986).


Moonspender (London: Collins, 1986; New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987).


Jade Woman (London: Collins, 1988; New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989).


The Very Last Gambado (London: Collins, 1989; New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990).


The Great California Game (London: Century, 1991; New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991).


The Shores of Sealandings, as Jonathan Grant (London: Century, 1991).


The Lies of Fair Ladies (Bristol: Scorpion, 1991; New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992).


Storms at Sealandings, as Grant (London: Century, 1992).


Paid and Loving Eyes (London: Century, 1993; New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993).


The Sin within Her Smile (London: Century, 1993; New York: Viking, 1994).


Mehala, Lady of Sealandings, as Grant (London: Century, 1993).


The Grace in Older Women (London: Century, 1995; New York: Viking, 1995).


The Possessions of a Lady (London: Century, 1996; New York: Viking, 1996).


Different Women Dancing (London: Macmillan, 1997; New York: Viking, 1997).


The Rich and the Profane (London: Macmillan, 1998; New York: Viking, 1999).


Prey Dancing (London: Macmillan, 1998; New York: Viking, 1998).


A Rag, a Bone, and a Hank of Hair (London: Macmillan, 1999; New York: Viking, 2000).


Die Dancing (London: Macmillan, 2000; New York: Viking, 2001).


Every Last Cent (London: Macmillan, 2001; New York: Viking, 2002).

COLLECTIONS


Lovejoy at Large (London: Arrow, 1991)--comprises Spend Game, The Vatican Rip, and The Tartan Ringers.


Lovejoy at Large Again (London: Arrow, 1993)--comprises The Judas Pair, Gold from Gemini, and The Grail Tree.


OTHER


"Eyes for Offa Red," in Winter's Crimes 11, edited by George Hardinge (London: Macmillan, 1979; New York: St. Martin's Press, 1979).


"The Hours of Angelus," in The Year's Best Mystery and Suspense Stories, edited by Edward D. Hock (New York: Walker, 1982).


"The Julian Mondays," in Winter's Crimes 18, edited by Hilary Hale (London: Macmillan, 1986).


"The Contras of Bloomsbury Square," in Winter's Crimes 21, edited by Hale (London: Macmillan, 1989).


"The Mood Cuckoo," in 1st Culprit: An Annual of Crime Stories, edited by Cody Lewin and Michael Z. Lewin (London: Chatto & Windus, 1992); republished as 1st Culprit: A Crime Writers' Association Annual (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993).


PLAY PRODUCTION


Terminus, Cheshire, England, Chester Festival, November 1978.


PERIODICAL PUBLICATION


"The Trouble with Dialect," Journal of the Lancashire Dialect Society, 38 (September 1989): 2-6.

Other Series / Books of Interest

The Incomer

The Incomer (1981), written under the pseudonym of Graham Gaunt, is not part of the Lovejoy series. Instead, it is a mystery in the vein of those of Ruth Rendell, a study of the vigilante "justice" of English villagers whose prejudices predate Oliver Cromwell; the novel pits "incomers," those not born and bred in the village, against locals over the treatment of Les Taunton, a simple man accused of murdering a local girl but freed for lack of evidence. Behind the gossip, the affairs, and the secret spying of neighbor on neighbor lurks a cruel self-righteousness that evokes "the dark days of past ages when folk were half-mad with superstition." The tensions in the novel depend on a love-hate relationship between a self-assured doctor, Clare Salford, and a hesitant priest, Reverend Shaw Watson. Their combined efforts reveal the truth and save a life, while proving that a courageous heart is perhaps more important than technological expertise. The style and tone of The Incomer are more traditional than those of the Lovejoy series.

The Mehala of Sealandings




Under the name Jonathan Grant, Gash produced a trilogy titled The Mehala of Sealandings, comprising The Shores of Sealandings (1991), Storms at Sealandings (1992), and Mehala, Lady of Sealandings (1993). With its mythological and ecological concerns, it is a major departure from his mystery stories.




Clare Burtonall Series



In 1997, with Different Women Dancing, Gash launched a new detective series featuring an unusual detective team: Clare Burtonall, a medical practitioner, and Bonn, a streetwise gigolo of growing importance in her life. The duo meet for the first time when they both stop to assist at a fatal road accident. The accident begins to look suspiciously like murder, however, and Clare's husband, an influential property developer, seems somehow involved: the dead man is a business associate, and his battered briefcase is furtively delivered to the Burtonall home. Bonn, who heads his own team of men for the Pleases Escort Agency, draws Clare into unfamiliar territory--the criminal underworld of urban England. Unlike the ribald and jovial village tales involving Lovejoy, these novels share a darkness akin to that of Graham Greene's Brighton Rock (1938). They depict a world inhabited by the down-and-out, the dregs of society, and the predators. They are graphic explorations of hard-boiled urban settings and personalities. In Prey Dancing (1998), the second novel in the series, Clare, determined to pass on the dying words of an eighteen-year-old drug addict and street person to the man to whom they were addressed, discovers he is an angry, threatening criminal, a weapons man for a gang of murderous thugs with revenge in mind.
Until this new series, Grant had, in the main, avoided medical concerns in his novels, but since he had retired from medicine, he was no longer writing to escape his daily routines and the human problems they involved.
Die Dancing (2000) returns to Gash's new detective team. Clare is newly divorced, Bonn has become her lover as well as partner in amateur detection, and, unbeknownst to Clare, the Pleases Escort Agency is the secret sponsor of her own new medical practice. While the pair merrily dance away an evening, a "fixer" for important businessmen is brutally beaten to death. The death has political implications because of the man's ties to a member of Parliament and personal associations for his similar links to Clare's former husband. While the detective inspector on the case follows these leads, Clare and Bonn follow other leads that end in more murder.




Monday, October 19, 2009

Faces in the Pool



Faces in the Pool (©2008)

Genre: Mystery
Location: England

Ten Word Game



The Ten Word Game (©2003)

Genre: Mystery
Location: England

Every Last Cent



Every Last Cent (©2001)

Genre: Mystery
Location: England
Every Last Cent (2001) involves another large-scale antiques scam, in which Lovejoy divines antiques as his alleged son, Mortimer, denounces fakes, and dozens of characters engage in a variety of nefarious doings. The loose-jointed plot spins off in colorful vignettes and informative and entertaining discourses on a variety of historical and artistic topics.
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.

A Rag, a Bone and a Hank of Hair



# 21 A Rag, A Bone, and a Hank of Hair (©2000)

Genre: Mystery
Location: England
Reviews Available by: [Harriet Klausner]
In A Rag, a Bone, and a Hank of Hair (1999), Lovejoy, as a favor to a friend, breaks his usual patterns and goes to London to check out who is passing off fake gemstones. There he is reminded of why he so despises the city. In this novel, he travels between the antiques markets of Bermondsey, Camden Passage, and Portobello and takes on a dangerous German entrepreneur responsible for the death of a fellow antique dealer and the destitute existence of the friend's wife.
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.

The Rich and the Profane




# 20 The Rich and the Profane (©1999)

Genre: Mystery


Location: England





Reviews Available by: [Harriet Klausner]
Grant began to introduce some medical concerns into the Lovejoy series, for example, having Lovejoy respond sympathetically in The Rich and the Profane (1998) to a paraplegic youngster who paints credible forgeries with a toothbrush clenched between her teeth. Lovejoy provides the youngster lessons in his art. Typical is his advice on putting together an antique hunter's kit, which he concludes with "If technology scares you, forget the little microscope and make do with the tape measure, the colour chart, the hand lens and the torch. They'll save you a fortune, and maybe earn you one." The novel takes Lovejoy to Guernsey, seeking revenge for the supposed death of a companion in crime whom he believes has been tossed into the bottomless, bubbling hot mud of an ancient pool on priory grounds. When Lovejoy pulls together a musical and gambling extravaganza as part of his revenge strategy, he finds how far afield his assumptions have been. In the process he brings wealth and fame to many, but is lucky to barely escape with his life.
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.


The Possessions of a Lady



# 19 The Possessions of a Lady (©1996)

Genre: Mystery
Location: England

The Grace in Older Women



# 18 The Grace in Older Women (©1995)

Genre: Mystery
Location: England
The Grace in Older Women is a tribute both to lovingly, skillfully faked "antiques" and to the virtues of women who are ugly and aged by conventional standards but whose grace, understanding, and mercy can "sanctify a saint." The story begins with Lovejoy making love with a lady in a forest to get close to her valuable Bilston enamels and ends with him trapped into initiating two aging spinsters (the proprietors of the Lorelei tearooms and of various tourist tours for gullible Americans) in the mysteries of sex. He is later sacrificed to the insatiable appetites of a female pretender to the British throne (by way of Charles Edward Stuart, or "Bonnie Prince Charlie"), who forcibly enlists him to raise funds for her cause, and his mounting of a huge auction of forgeries and fakes (all lovingly described and some perhaps genuine). His able assistant is the highly competent but unattractive mistress of one of Lovejoy's old friends, Tyrer, who is drowned in the local pond and whose mobile "Sex Museum" is torched; the auction is meant to flush out his killer. In the process Lovejoy exposes a mail-order priest and a criminal cop, reveals the source of decay behind the atrophied village of Fenstone, and denounces Bonnie Prince Charlie as a total sham, "Yanks" as litigious and obsessive handshakers, and nature as "lurking." In this novel, as throughout the series, Lovejoy's love of antiques is balanced by his sympathy for birds and beasts, as he nearly faints from the exquisite beauty of a seventeenth-century tortoise-shell fan and then from his recollection of the monstrous cruelties perpetrated on turtles in the process of collecting such shells.
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.

The Sin Within Her Smile



# 17 The Sin Within Her Smile (©1993)

Genre: Mystery
Location: England
In The Sin within Her Smile (1993) Lovejoy is sold as a "slave for a day" at a charity auction, a position villagers assume is a humorous guise for sexual hanky-panky but which proves in addition a serious bondage in which Lovejoy is expected to help divvy Romano-Celtic gold artifacts. The divvying is part of a major scheme to revive ancient Roman gold mines in Wales. Furthermore, Lovejoy is commandeered to assist on a fund-raising mental-health caravan, an excursion for kleptomaniacs, nudists, murderers, philanderers, senile oldsters, and an infant. Of his situation Lovejoy jokes, "Suddenly it's like I'm watching a kabuki play blindfold with commentary in lost Tasmanian." The wagon loads of "loonies" begin to seem far saner than the greedy "good" citizens who use them and mock them. There are discursive lectures on gold, silver, diamonds, and Wales--its language, customs, history, and antiques. Ultimately, Lovejoy makes sure the murderers get their comeuppance, the indigent along the journey benefit from his expertise and softheartedness, various possessive women are foiled, and a sympathetic American colonel is inspired to cut from the Welsh mountains and transport to the United States a new Stonehenge to teach Americans about Wales.
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.

Paid and Loving Eyes



# 16 Paid and Loving Eyes (©1993)

Genre: Mystery
Location: England
Paid and Loving Eyes (1993), the plot of which critics have labeled "baroque," "cryptic," and "mindboggling," has a confusing array of characters, including a bevy of scheming females sexually conquering and manipulating Lovejoy (his former wife, Cissie, among them). Lovejoy's women come from all classes and backgrounds, but most are high-handed and scheming and even the good-hearted and innocent eventually find Lovejoy incorrigible. About them Lovejoy asserts "women talk in the pluperfect vindictive" and, even with the best of motives, unsettle a man's life. Nevertheless, he believes, "the lusts for antiques and women are one and the same" and "the sin within a woman's smile," to paraphrase the title of another Lovejoy novel, offers him a passion akin to the passion and the sin that antiques embody for him. While moonlighting as the driver of a van engaged for clandestine sexual encounters, Lovejoy ends up judging an illicit contest of antiques, spotting the fake, and thereby unwittingly dooming its forger. Then, compelled by Cissie's faked (or real) death, he becomes enmeshed in a complicated Continental antiques scam involving an underworld ring, a Swiss repository, defrauded insurance companies, and a hunt by the "paid but loving" eyes of SAPAR (Stolen Art and Purloined Antiques Rescue), a group of watchdogs of the antiques trade, out to expose fraud and exploitation. In addition to witty descriptions of France as a "gentle" land of "lies," "cruelty," and "preconceptions," tips on French antiques and on master fakers, and negative portraits of drug abuse, Gash's social conscience shines through, and the book exposes the horrors of debt-bonded indentured servitude in the European antiques trade--the use of young children to duplicate the injurious, bloody eighteenth- and nineteenth-century techniques of polishing and finishing furniture--and of white slavery for similar purposes in Third World countries: "the exploitation of over 3 million child slaves." The pain of children reproducing mahogany furniture in Dickensian workshops leaves him overwhelmed at the craftsmanship but physically ill at the human cost. Thus, Lovejoy blows up an antiques repository and with it a gang of unscrupulous antiquarians whose frauds depend on child labor.
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.

The Lies of Fair Ladies



# 15 The Lies of Fair Ladies (©1992)

Genre: Mystery
Location: England
The Lies of Fair Ladies (1991) begins with Lovejoy's friend, Prammi Joe, being suspected of stripping a carefully secured mansion of its valuable antiques. When Joe is killed, Lovejoy tracks down the real mastermind behind the heist, an anonymous but sinister broker who is engineering a major swindle that has local dealers feverishly stockpiling antiques in the hope of a quick profit. Lovejoy is aided by a sexy fortune-teller famous for full-body massages and a pet python, and by his prim apprentice, Luna, the mayor's wife. Readers share in Luna's apprenticeship, as Lovejoy instructs her in the fine points of his trade (buying, selling, bidding, faking) and regales her with pearls of philosophic wisdom ("Plastic spoons are the end of civilization").
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.

The Great California Game



# 14 The Great California Game (©1991)

Genre: Mystery
Location: California, USA
The Great California Game (1991), a result of Gash's visit to the United States, is one of the author's weaker efforts, mainly because his treatment of American lingo and social interaction rings false. What works well in a contained environment goes out of control as Lovejoy tackles an international antiques conspiracy. Lovejoy, fleeing Hong Kong, tends bar in a Manhattan eatery, until an opportunity to wait tables at an expensive dinner party gives him a chance to reveal his expertise: recognition of a guest's diamonds as fake and of an abused old table as a valuable antique. The party hosts entangle him in extortion and cons that result in the death of a fellow bartender. Joining forces with a streetwise eight-year-old boy and his down-and-out mother, a prostitute, Lovejoy heads for Malibu in hopes of raising sufficient backing to participate in a grand-scale gambling tournament with monumental stakes. He finds himself disturbed at the idea of antiques treated as commodities, however, and paves the way for a huge explosion that does in the game and its more-sinister players. Though federal agents engaged in a sting operation try to further involve him in exposing other antiques scams, Lovejoy, mother, and child flee to Kansas. Far from the soil that nurtures his personality and the class differences that compel his behavior, even Lovejoy's narration rings hollow in this novel.
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.

The Very Last Gambado




# 13 The Very Last Gambado (©1989)

Genre: Mystery
Location: England
In The Very Last Gambado (1989), the title of which refers to the last jump in a tumbler's routine, a theft on a gigantic scale is planned with a movie production as cover. Lovejoy, as technical consultant and extra for a caper movie set in the British Museum and involving the theft of priceless art and archaeological objects, must save Britain's national treasures and himself. Though the plot of the novel is weak, the narration is as lively and informative as ever. The story begins with the death of an eminent local forger and the disappearance of an antique dealer, turns on rumors of a local hoodlum sending full containers of antiques to the United States and on an aged Russian countess with an enticing collection of family heirlooms, and ends with a shoot-out and a roundup of the villains.
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.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Jade Woman



# 12 Jade Woman (©1988)

Genre: Mystery

Location: Hong Kong



Jade Woman (1988) is a loving tribute to Hong Kong, a city Gash knows intimately from his time there in the 1960s. In this novel Lady Jane, one of Lovejoy's many wealthy liaisons, engages in a carefree destruction of Lovejoy's way of life in order to force him into marriage. She not only has him "evicted, bankrupted, sued and dispossessed," but also pursued by an angry mobster who had depended on a confiscated fake, eight months in the making, to save a tricky financial exchange. When Lovejoy escapes to Hong Kong, he finally meets his match: the city itself, a benchmark of affluence and of poverty, a legendary showplace of capitalistic venture with everyone engaged in nefarious scams. Lovejoy falls asleep at the airport and awakens to find all his possessions gone, including his passport, and he is trapped in a city of far cleverer con artists than he has ever encountered. Where he could eke out a subsistence-level livelihood in England, on the lam in Hong Kong he is reduced to starvation and bondage. Though on the edge of the world of James Clavell's Noble House (1981), Lovejoy is trapped in a much lower social level, where the wheeling and dealing is literally cutthroat. His sex appeal proves effective only in work as a gigolo, and only his skills as a divvy save him from a life of prostitution, as he becomes caught up in murder, theft, seduction, and the machinations of a triad "Jade Woman" named Ling-Ling. To the question "Is every moral man up for grabs?" his experience answers, "quite possibly, in Hong Kong." To his attempts to make sense of triad schemes, Ling-Ling rightly responds that Chinese tactics might be "too duplicitous" for his "romantic soul."
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.

Moonspender



# 11 Moonspender (©1986)


Genre: Mystery

Location: England



Moonspender (1986) intertwines several plotlines: Lovejoy is asked to validate the source of rumors about a genuine Roman bronze found locally; coerced into arranging a large wedding for a womanizing friend; manages a failing farm at the bequest of a wealthy lover; is forced to participate in a rigged television quiz show about antiques; helps redecorate a new restaurant and helps its conservative owners deal with the wild tastes of their gay decorators; and is intrigued by high-tech, midnight treasure hunters. Outraged by an irritating television hostess, Lovejoy bursts into inventive name-calling, denounces the fakes, and in general creates chaos and havoc that results in the death of a forger, run down by a bull. There are a barrage of lawsuits and romantic complications as Lovejoy moves from bed to bed and scheme to scheme. Readers learn how to fake a Roman bronze artifact and how to make falsehoods ring true: believe in them at the moment of delivery. All is unraveled at the end. Gash's portrait of Lovejoy's "swishy" associates, Sandy and Mel (and Cyril and Keyveen in later novels), adds tongue- in-cheek humor to the satiric mix, especially their campy come-on to embarrassed village cops and their multicolored Rover with angel wings projecting from the mudguards, orange-striped curtains, and "a dazzling array of painted flowers, stripes, zigzags, and twinning greenery." Despite their heavily exaggerated lifestyle, they are basically benign, in contrast to the vicious, greedy hypocrites preying on the unwary, whom Lovejoy foils.
By 1988 Gash could afford to retire from his daily round of medical duties. He opted to serve as a private consultant, a specialist in infectious diseases. He also spoke in libraries throughout Britain on his personal, intuitive theory about the impulses that motivate and produce creative writing.
He was also free to pursue his interest in dialects. In 1989 he published an article on dialect for the Journal of the Lancashire Dialect Society under his real name. For some time he has regularly contributed poems in Lancashire dialect to the Record, and in the Lovejoy series he has his protagonist regularly translate arcane terminology, underworld slang, and gypsy terms such as jinney-mengro, chohawno, and moskey. Moreover, Lovejoy's attitudes and concerns are expressed in colorful slang that suits his casual lifestyle and carefree ways. Lovejoy and his drunken barker, Tinker, converse in dealer's slang about "whifflers" and "vannies," all of which Lovejoy carefully explains. Other examples of such slang are "knocking down" (stopping at the highest bid), "naughty" (deliberately falsified), "cloth job" (raiding a church), "flocking" (gradually releasing antiques and fakes claimed to be from a single source), and "twinning" (the practice of dividing up a piece of antique furniture and using the parts to create two pieces, each half genuine, half false). The novels also include technical terms such as "electrochemical abrasive stripping voltammetry," "depletion gilding," and "Fourier transform interferometry," and antique terms such as "japanned," "thurible," and "arctophiles" (teddy bear collectors). Such a mix of slang and specialized jargon reflects Lovejoy's working-class origins, his knowledge of arcane historical terms, his expertise, his individualism, and his close acquaintance with underworld activities. It also reveals Gash as an amateur linguist with a good ear for dialect and a deep-seated interest in language.
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.

The Tartan Ringers



# 10 The Tartan Ringers (©1986)

Genre: Mystery

Location: England



In The Tartan Ringers (1986), published in the United States as The Tartan Sell, after a truck driver transporting fake antiques that prove genuine turns up dead, another death follows quickly, and both suspicious bobbies and murderous thugs turn on Lovejoy. The intrepid divvy goes underground, joining a traveling carnival and divining "treasures" for a fee to fund his travels north, where the scam originated. After unwillingly helping carnival toughs roust rivals, Lovejoy leaves his love of the moment and sneaks away to Scotland, where he is educated about historical Scottish shams: "The bagpipe?--the only invention ever to come out of Egypt. . . . The kilt?--invented by Thomas Rowlandson, an English iron-smelter, in 1730." He gets caught up in the troubles of the McGunn clan and helps them save Tachnadray mansion by organizing a complex scam, a "paper job," an auction of household goods swollen and multiplied by offerings that dealers gain an instant provenance for, enhanced by a tricky auctioneer and "steganography" (secret pricing). The auctioneer, Cheviot Yale, embodies the skilled artistry of the truly great con artist as he sets up elaborate systems of ruses and counterruses to arouse the competitive spirit of bidders, manipulates pacing and presentation, and meets all the legal requirements of authentication while building in subtle disclaimers.
Lovejoy equates love and antiques and argues, "Hatred and evil are their opposite. I'm an antique dealer, in bad with the law, and I should know." Thus, the book incorporates a wealth of details about legal and not-so-legal antique cons but never loses sight of its original double-murder mystery. There is comedy too, often mocking pretensions and pretenses, as in the irreverent comment about the Scotsman who had a stroke "the day after two immigrant Pakistanis registered a Clan MacKhan tartan." The final scenes, an exciting chase sequence and a surreal and deadly parade at the Edinburgh festival, bring all the subplots together in a clever, comic way. Maslow, a policeman who appears in multiple novels in the series and always seems to classify murders as accidents, attacks Lovejoy as "pathetic," haunting "junk shops," and "shagging" his way "through women's handbags," but he is obviously jealous of both Lovejoy's success with women and his ability to detect crime. Lovejoy despises the police, particularly Inspector Maslow, and concludes, "the law has no sense of what's right."
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.

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.

Gondola Scam



# 8 Gondola Scam (©1984)

Genre: Mystery

Location: Venice, Italy



The Gondola Scam (1984) strains credulity but is nonetheless exciting and clever. It begins with a mugging and a robbery and moves on to a rich, elderly collector who, fearing Venice will sink into the sea and its treasures with it, resolves to remove every treasure for the sake of posterity and his private collection. He plans to replace the originals with accurate reproductions--with Lovejoy's assistance--and has a forger's factory to do so. The setting provides Lovejoy an opportunity to eulogize the magnificence of Venice, its beauty, its wonders:
Everything . . . in sight was man-made. Boats, canals, houses, wharves, bridges, hotels, churches. . . . It gave me a funny feeling, almost as if I'd come safe home. . . . Venice is singing caged birds at canal-side windows . . . exquisite shops and window dressing . . . inverted-funnel chimneys, leaning campaniles, wrought iron at doors and windows, grilles at every fenestration, little flower sellers, droves of children and noisy youths . . . bridges every few yards, narrow alleys where you have to duck to get under the houses which have crammed so close they've merged to make a flat tunnel. Venice is patchy areas of din--from speedboats racing to deposit their owners in cafes to do nothing hour upon hour--and silence. It's uncanny. . . .
For Lovejoy, Venice is a joy because it is all man-made. Nonetheless, he discovers that Venice has a darker side that also means "fright, evil, everything sinister," "perverse secrecy of the most surreptitious and malevolent kind," "secret trials, silent stabbings, spies, clandestine murder, and sudden vanishing without trace," "a slit throat while sleeping, and violent unfathomable assassination," "poison--it took a Venetian priest to murder a communicant by slipping poison into the very Host," "refined treachery and skullduggery," "a reign of hidden terror," and "stark cold cruelty." In the name of art, Lovejoy steals a gondola, breaks into a palazzo, forges a piece of art, saves an injured woman shot in his stead on a reedy island, and outwits a large-scale forgery ring run by killers. A "borrowed" dredger, a funeral barge, and the Venetian police's art squad further his actions. Ultimately, he buries the killers under tons of stone and water.
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.

The Sleepers of Erin



# 7 The Sleepers of Erin (©1983)

Genre: Mystery

Location: England


In The Sleepers of Erin (1983) Lovejoy is framed for stealing church valuables by the real thieves, who cut his artery. After recovering (aided by a sympathetic nurse) and a bit of revenge, he unwittingly precipitates the murder of an Irish antique dealer (the nurse's brother), and then travels to Kilfinney, Ireland, to investigate links between the frame, the murder, and the theft. There, while avoiding "teams of rich, homicidal, fraudulent con merchants," he is caught up in a complicated plot involving a priceless set of silver Irish artifacts, the Derrynaflan Hoard. He takes a hilarious ride through the byways of rural Ireland accompanied by a would-be poet whose lilting ramblings are entertaining and whose skill as an archer proves valuable. During his travels Lovejoy stumbles on a ring fort, a Stone Age house, a lone burial tumulus, and a set of gold Celtic torc "sleepers" that are at the heart of a daring fraud. At the same time, he gets involved in complicated sexual affairs, so much so that a local policeman describes Lovejoy's liaisons with women as crossing "all known marital boundaries." The conclusion of this plot is a triple con with a team within a team to con the conners and with Lovejoy beating the Irish in retaliation for friends trying to defraud friends. The twists and turns of plots and motives make this one of Gash's best creations. When a dealer tries to con him with a fake edition of John Milton's Paradise Lost (1667), Lovejoy drives the dealer's own car through the man's storefront window. Later, when two church robbers frame him, he methodically stones them with a homemade slingshot, breaks their arms, and throws them over a bridge, thinking: "Sooner or later somebody has to chuck in the sponge on a vengeance. Otherwise we're all at war for ever and ever, and life's nothing but one long holocaust." After this noble sentiment, however, he queries angrily, "why should that somebody be me?" At the end, he arranges a cave-in that wipes out a full gang of murderers.
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.

Firefly Gadroon



# 6 Firefly Gadroon (©1982)

Genre: Mystery

Location: England


Firefly Gadroon (1982) begins with Lovejoy trying to master one of the lost arts of silver craft--the reverse gadroon--and ends with him on his way to jail but with agreements already made to exploit his mastery of that art. In between he is consulted about a firefly cage carved in coal and a carving that holds the secret to a giant slab of chrysoberyl, a metamorphic rock of incredible value. As a result, his friend and teacher (the gadroon master) is killed, and Lovejoy goes after the murderers, a gang of thieves with their stash of portable antiques in an old sea fort. There is an exciting chase sequence that begins in the depths of the fort and leads to the nearby reeds and tidal flats. Lovejoy turns his stolen boat into a fire ship and explodes the ship of those responsible for his friend's death: a blackened, blistered hand reaches from the oily water; one of the villains, his legs blown off, drowns in a foot of seawater. In this novel and throughout the series, Gash captures through Lovejoy the fanaticism of the true fan, the self-destructive commitment to a single goal that can lead to honor and prestige but also to ruinous, almost pathological single-mindedness. Gash suggests that the line between genius and eccentricity is a thin one: one man's drive toward excellence is another's lunatic compulsion. Lovejoy's lifestyle is eccentric, but his instincts for true antiques are unerring. Time and again he sets up a scam or perpetrates a forgery to earn enough to pay expenses while trying to outwit and undo those who have done him or his wrong, but once the funds are in his hands he cannot rest until they are spent on acquiring more antiques: "I felt on top of the world--money in my pocket, antiques nearby and vengeance at hand," he says in The Firefly Gadroon. "Of course I should have first [fulfilled my duties]. . . . Instead I finished up an hour later with the stumpwork box . . . the collection of old theatre playbills . . . a carved beechwood chair of the Great Civil War period." He defends such actions as not all self-indulgence since his buying and selling also involves collecting useful gossip, in this case about "thirty-one antiques nicked in the past three months."
As a consequence of his compulsions, his thatched cottage is a rat's nest of disorder and filth--grime and dust and bits and pieces of antiques everywhere, heating nonexistent, and cupboards bare, except perhaps for a forgotten pastry, his main source of nourishment. His divan folds into his only bed. However, despite his perpetual need of funds, he feels superior to snobbish aristocrats who have sold their heritage, replaced valuable antiques with modern reproductions, and lack his good taste, appreciation, skill, and expertise. He is the ultimate snob about true value and takes pleasure in berating the limited visions and pedestrian tastes of aristocrats with no understanding of the deep sacrifices made by impoverished craftsmen to create beauty of form and function. Lovejoy argues that he normally hates "tricks with antiques" and calls such activities "evil" and "sin," but then concludes that the practice is "so common nowadays" and that "antique dealers--and even real people--think it's perfectly proper," so his occasional trickery in a good cause is perfectly acceptable. Lovejoy is capable of justifying anything in the name of expediency or rogue's justice. He constantly points out, "A couple dozen of these forgeries will keep you in idle affluence a year or so--if you're unscrupulous, that is." Even if you end up destitute on the streets, says Lovejoy, "you'll be one of the few owners of . . . Greenwich . . . armour."
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.

The Vatican Rip



# 5 The Vatican Rip (©1981)

Genre: Mystery

Location: Rome, Italy



In The Vatican Rip (1981), an Italian checks Lovejoy out at Seddon's auction rooms (where Lovejoy, angered at the auctioneer's ill treatment of Tinker, publicly points out the fakes on sale). The Italian then shadows Lovejoy at the Three Cups and threatens his friends in the hope of forcing Lovejoy to go to Italy, learn Italian, and steal from the Vatican a Chippendale table the Italian claims was stolen from his family. The opening lines set the tone: "The trouble with life is, you start off worse and go downhill." In Rome, Lovejoy forms an alliance with a seemingly elderly female con artist, who enlivens the action with a repertoire of disguises, tasty tidbits on the Vatican, and an irrepressibly larcenous approach to life. He works part-time in an antique shop while perfecting the plan for the heist and plotting revenge on his employer. When he makes his move, however--a "fiddle switch"--he finds a fake already in place, his employer a cardinal, and himself an intended dupe. The caper is, as Callendar wrote in The New York Times Book Review (21 February 1982), "well-planned and executed" and the writing "urgent, realistic, amusing," but the explanations "lame" and the motivations "less believable than in the past." Nevertheless, the shooting of Pope John Paul II the week the novel was published and its detailed description of the Vatican's security system resulted in the initial printing selling out in two days.
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.

Spend Game



# 4 Spend Game (©1980)

Genre: Mystery

Location: England


Spend Game (1980), one of Gash's best novels, begins with Lovejoy and a lady friend seeing a car go over an embankment and finding its driver--an old army friend and local antique dealer--dead. Investigating, Lovejoy tries to trace the missing escritoire the friend had purchased the night before and, in the process, takes up with another lady and finds a message and key in the desk of a deceased doctor. Although a massive black saloon automobile tries to drive him off the road, much to the regret of its driver, Lovejoy's "industrial archaeology" uncovers a solid silver Victorian steam engine hidden in an underground tunnel. Nearly entombed permanently by outsiders who had murdered his friend, he finds solace in an effective, violent, and devastating use of the engine as a weapon.
In this novel, and throughout the series, when not obsessed by antiques, Lovejoy is beleaguered by women, the joy and bane of his life. The women who surround him (and they are plentiful) end up mothering him, bringing him food, cuddling him for warmth, trying to clean up his cottage against his protests. Nonetheless, they always fail, for he is incorrigibly set in his ways: "Honestly, I just can't see the point of moving things to a fixed spot for the sake of mere tidiness. Things only wander about again. I find it more sensible just to stay vigilant, simply keep on the lookout for essentials like towels and the odd pan. In fact, I'd say neatness is a time-waster." After spending several hours scrubbing a floor, he sees little accomplished and resolves to leave such obsessive tidying to others; moreover, he bemoans the negative effects of excessive cleaning on antiques, which lose their value from the absence of an aged fingerprint or grime identifiable from a significant locale.
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.

The Grail Tree



# 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."
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.