Faces in the Pool

December 7, 2009
In Gash's jaunty 24th Lovejoy mystery to feature the crooked East Anglian antiques expert with a weakness for women (after 2004's "The Ten Word Game"), Lovejoy accepts an offer of early release from prison on condition he work for a speed-dating service run by Laura Moon, a wealthy divorcée. Part of the deal, he soon learns, is to wed Laura in a ploy to bring her ex-husband, a confidence trickster, out of hiding. Lovejoy agrees, but before the ink is dry on the marriage register, a couple of his friends suffer fatal accidents. The rambling plot involves white tribes, people who control fortunes in old jewels and curios that could potentially flood the antiques market. While Gash makes the British slang easy to follow for American readers and throws in plenty of authentic antiques lore, this dated tale with its often grating protagonist is unlikely to win the author many new fans. "(Dec.)" .

October 15, 2009
Lovejoy gets married!

Languishing in the nick for an antique scam that went belly up, Lovejoy gets an offer he can't refuse from Ellen Jaynor, the brains behind The Anglers Manglers Speed-Datery. If he'll come along, chat up Laura Moon and agree to marriage, an early prison release will be arranged. But with Lovejoy nothing's ever that simple, and whoever said you can't scam a scammer didn't know what he was talking about. In the space of a week, Lovejoy's loony bride-to-be has involved him with delegates from 16 groups representing the world's Lost Tribes, who want him to substantiate the authenticity of their priceless antiques. Oh, and by the way, would Lovejoy also find Laura's ex-husband, who absconded after murdering a young girl? The following week finds Lovejoy even busier. Three of his chums are topped. His illegitimate son Mortimer pops up, then gets kidnapped, prompting Lovejoy to flee Somnell House, the repository of all those antiques, just before it burns to the ground. With so many pretty women to make smiles with (Lovejoy's term for a bit of sex), he barely has time to confront the only woman he's ever really trusted, more fool he, as she sails off with her inamorata from Blackpool's North Pier, accompanied by a boatload of the Lost Tribes' valuables.

A picaresque tour de farce. If you crave linear plotting, Gash (The Ten Word Game, 2004, etc.) will send you screaming for Tylenol, but nobody dissembles more brilliantly.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

October 1, 2009
Gashs Lovejoy is a character straight out of an eighteenth-century picaresque novelhe lives by his wits, cavorts through an exhausting series of sexual escapades, and is always falling into and out of trouble. Lovejoy is a British antiques dealer and divvy, someone with an almost eerie ability to sniff out the genuine from the fake. Antiques represent his one true love. In the latest (the twenty-fourth in the series), Lovejoy is in jail for his latest scrape with the law, but he gets an early release when a divorced millionairess pulls some strings. The millionairess has strings for Lovejoy, too. First, as payment for his release, Lovejoy is ordered to join the divorcees speed-dating agency. Then the real scam hits: Lovejoy is coerced into marrying the woman in order to flush out her ex-husband. The action careens along amiably, but what holds it together is Lovejoys great knowledge of antiques, which he happily dispenses to the reader. High mystery-comedy.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)