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Antiques and women are really the only things that I'm interested in. Getting them in the right order can be a problem, because even a fake antique can be absolutely fascination - especially if it drives someone to commit murder.Antiques and women are what led me to Venice on the trail of the killer, and there my modest talents saw me blagging my way into a job as a tour guide as well as lending a hand as a sculptor. My credentials as a tour guide were as bogus as the forgery I was show more chiselling and it becan to feel like everywhere I turned, nothing was as it seemed.
Antiques and women almost got me killed when the bullets started flying . . .
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Lovejoy attends a secret professionals-only antiques auction and is mystified and offended that his client would be taken in by the fake painting being offered, and worse, bids high enough to win it. When the client is murdered so soon after the auction, it's clear that someone didn't want him to have the fake. Lovejoy is pulled into a family business that sends him to Venice looking for the source of the fake artwork.
This was my first Lovejoy novel, though I've seen a few episodes of the t.v. series. There are good points here- Lovejoy is self-deprecating but full of insider information about antiques and how to make forgeries (something he dabbles in himself) and he makes some pointed observations about human behavior. He's also show more incredibly mysaginistic and has zero morals. What didn't work for me was the whole grand plan towards the end, as it was too difficult to follow all those minute movements the author was describing. Not a bad story and I have another Lovejoy on the shelf to try. show less
This was my first Lovejoy novel, though I've seen a few episodes of the t.v. series. There are good points here- Lovejoy is self-deprecating but full of insider information about antiques and how to make forgeries (something he dabbles in himself) and he makes some pointed observations about human behavior. He's also show more incredibly mysaginistic and has zero morals. What didn't work for me was the whole grand plan towards the end, as it was too difficult to follow all those minute movements the author was describing. Not a bad story and I have another Lovejoy on the shelf to try. show less
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2132126.html
This is a reasonably good illustration of both the strengths and weaknesses of the Lovejoy books. On the plus side, Gash actually uses both Lovejoy's home setting in East Anglia, for the first quarter of the book, and then a richly imagined Venice where he becomes part of an industrial scale forgery operation, the details of the manufacturing fake antiques outlined in all their loving complexity. On the downside, women continue to throw themselves at Lovejoy for no apparent reason, he continues to treat them abominably, and the actual forgery plan is baroque to far beyond any point of plausibility, and the supposedly comic ending is almost identical to that of The Vatican Rip, published three show more years earlier. I think those who don't know the Lovejoy novels could take this as a fair sample of what they are like. show less
This is a reasonably good illustration of both the strengths and weaknesses of the Lovejoy books. On the plus side, Gash actually uses both Lovejoy's home setting in East Anglia, for the first quarter of the book, and then a richly imagined Venice where he becomes part of an industrial scale forgery operation, the details of the manufacturing fake antiques outlined in all their loving complexity. On the downside, women continue to throw themselves at Lovejoy for no apparent reason, he continues to treat them abominably, and the actual forgery plan is baroque to far beyond any point of plausibility, and the supposedly comic ending is almost identical to that of The Vatican Rip, published three show more years earlier. I think those who don't know the Lovejoy novels could take this as a fair sample of what they are like. show less
The sixth [Lovejoy] mystery
dreadful
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Author Information
Jonathan Gash, best known as the creator of the character Lovejoy, is the pseudonym of John Grant. Grant was born on September 30, 1933 in Bolton, Lancashire, England. He was educated at the University of London and the Royal College of Surgeons and Physics. In the mid-1970s, Gash began writing to relieve some of the stress of his career as a show more physician. The first Lovejoy novel, The Judas Pair, won the Creasey Award for the Crime Writer's Association of Great Britain for best first crime novel. A number of other novels, Lovejoy's and otherwise, have followed. (Bowker Author Biography) Jonathan Gash was born John Grant on September 30, 1933 in Bolton, Lancashire, England. He was received an M.B. and a B.S. at the University of London, a M.R.C.S. and a L.R.C.P. at the Royal College of Surgeons and Physicians and has also earned D.Path., D.Bact., D.H.M., M.D. and D.T.M.H. He achieved the rank of Major in the British Army Medical Corps and was posted to Germany. In 1955, he married Pamela Richard, and they had three daughters. Grant had served as a general practitioner in London, a pathologist in London and Essex, a clinical pathologist in Hanover and Berlin, a lecturer in clinical pathology and head of division at the University of Hong Kong, and a microbiologist in Hong Kong and London. He was also the head of the bacteriology unit at the School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, University of London, from 1971 to 1988. He is a fellow of the International College of Surgeons and of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine. Jonathan Gash is the author of The Lovejoy Novels, whose first was "The Judas Pair" (1977). It won the Creasey Award from the Crime Writer's Association of Great Britain for the best first crime novel of the year. Some of the other titles in the Lovejoy series are "The Vatican Rip" (1981), "The Gondola Scam" (1983), "Jade Woman" (1988), "Lies of Fair Ladies" (1991), "The Grace in Older Women" (1995), and "A Rag, a Bone and a Hank of Hair" (1999). He also has a series that features Dr. Clare Burtonall with the first being "Different Women Dancing" (1997). He has also written "The Incomer" (1982) under the pseudonym Graham Gaunt and "Mehala, Lady of Sealandings" (1993) under the pseudonym Jonathan Grant. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- The Gondola Scam
- Original publication date
- 1984
- People/Characters
- Connie Bridewell; Jasper Coke; Ben Cramphorn; Margaret Dainty; Tinker Dill; Giuseppe Fusi (show all 17); Inspector Ledger; Lovejoy; Mr. Malleson; Caterina Norman; Colonel Geoffrey Norman; Lavinia Norman; Mr. Pinder; David Vidal; Phil Watmore; Sam Wiltshire; Elsie Hayward (Patrick's new hanger-on)
- Important places
- East Anglia, England, UK; Venice, Veneto, Italy; Veneto, Italy
- Epigraph
- Death and Venice go together."
--James Morris, Venice, 1960
"This place won't last long."
Old lady, on arriving in Venice.
--E. V. Lucas, A Wanderer in Venice, 1923
scam (skam) n. slang. A fraudulent scheme, especially one for making money quickly.
- Oxford American Dictionary, 1980 - Dedication
- This book is dedicated to the ancient Chinese God of Literature K'uei Hsing, whom the sea monsters eternally rescue from drowning in the rising waters of the ocean.
--LOVEJOY
A story for Lal, Jackie, Pam, Elizabeth, Roy, and Susan as always, plus Ruth and Al's mob on the Venice run. - First words
- Usually people say women come first. Other times it's money, survival, anger, ambition. But deep down it's none of these delectables.
It's antiques.
Antiques are everything. First, last, every single thing.
<... (show all)br>Forever and ever. - Quotations
- We don't have state-owned auction rooms like the Dorotheum in Vienna, and I'm quite glad about that. "At least in our system roguery is predictable and perennial," I told Connie. "I'd hate it to be legal too."
Why the hell people aren't more trusting I'll never know. Just because I'd nicked his girl, ruined his happiness, tricked him about a lottery, wasted his day, and conned him into assisting my criminal enterprise was no reaso... (show all)n to get narked. I ask you. Where's trust gone?
The cleverer the forger the neater he is. - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)"Only, I've had an absolutely terrible time since I saved your life in that lagoon."
- Publisher's editor
- Kahn, Joan
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- 191
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- Reviews
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- (3.50)
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- ISBNs
- 8
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