Haven't been well enough to do anything but read today, and have therefore got through a number of books, the first being this tale of Lovejoy going to Rome to steal an antique table from the Vatican Museum. Lovejoy is at his most psychopathic here, gratuitously violent to bad guys and to women, and so utterly besotted with antiques as to be ( Read more... )

This is my sixth Lovejoy book in my current run, and the first of those which is set entirely in East Anglia. It is also one of the best; Lovejoy's obsession with antiques and his particular code of personal loyalty lead him to a dramatic and waterlogged showdown, with cosmic vengeance delivered by a bereaved donkey because the state's forces of ( Read more... )

I'm beginning to get the hang of the Lovejoy books now: a richly described and usually mildly exotic setting; an utterly convoluted and insane plot (as in conspiracy); a moderately convoluted and insane plot (as in storyline); lots of antiques lore injected into the text with varying degrees of randomness; and many many women competing to get into ( Read more... )

Completely by chance, the next in the random selection of Lovejoy books I have picked up recently takes place immediately after Jade Woman, which I read earlier this month. Lovejoy has escaped Hong Kong and arrives penniless in New York, where he soon gets sucked into a group of sinister plutocrats involved with raising questionable money as their ( Read more... )

Another Lovejoy book with a particularly implausible plot, allowing Gash to place his hero in Hong Kong (not contemporary 1980s Hong Kong, but the 1960s city that the author clearly knew well and loved) for fun with organised crime, sex work and inventing a previously unheard-of Chinese Impressionist painter. The antiques scam itself is as ( Read more... )

First, a PSA: I have very poor internet access at present, haven't seen LJ since Friday (posting from my phone) and am well behind on emails. Hope to catch up soon ( Read more... )

I thought I had read only one Lovejoy book, and that it wasn't this one; but there was an incident with an undercover policewoman here which I definitely remembered reading before, though almost none of the rest of the plot had stayed in my mind ( Read more... )