# 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."
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.
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