# 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.
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.
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