Tuesday, October 13, 2009

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.

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