Gain The Rich And The Profane (Lovejoy, #20) Constructed By Jonathan Gash Represented In E-Text

always, Johnathan Gash's antihero Lovejoy is involved in another antique scam where he narrowly escapes intact, Gash is a wonderfully witty and engaging writer and for anyone who loves antiques, reading the Lovejoy novels is an education with snippets of ancient technique, howto in fakery or 'reproductions' as Lovejoy calls them, histories of craftmen.
And of course Lovejoy what a loveable rascal! More Lovejoy please! Not my favorite, unfortunately, This one could have been a decent television/movie in its own right, The usual Lovejoy, except that hes nicer to the women in his life, and the flamer he includes in every book is not gay this time.
Also, a woman rescues him by killing his wouldbe killer, rather than his killing the wouldbe killer by accident in terrified selfdefense himself.
th in the Lovejoy series, It starts with a young woman asking Lovejoy to teach her how to steal an antique from an auction to spite her rich aunt, and ends with mayhem in the Channel Islands.
Along the way Lovejoy gets involved with a vast array of people wanting to exploit him, usually for purposes he doesn't understand until too late impersonates an impresario and creates on the fly and on the run one of the biggest and boldest scams he's ever come up with to save his own neck and a few others.


I found it a bit hard to keep track of what was going on, but I think this had more to do with reading it on and off over the course of a week than any fault in the book.
Lovejoy is his usual whining, womanising, selfpitying self, with the usual constant stream of chatter about antiques, And as usual, underneath the unselfconscious whining and the scamming large and small, he's actually trying to do the right thing by the people he thinks deserving of it.
I prefer the earlier books in the series, but wouldn't mind reading this one again, I may be biased because I love the Lovejoy TV series and I'm a fool for anything English mystery but I did enjoy this book immensely.
Jonathan Gash spins a witty turn the book is replete with interesting characters, unique prose, and eccentric twists, Everything this britmystery lover would want in a book of this genre, : If your only exposure to Lovejoy is the old Ian McShane TV show, you are in for a shock when you read a Lovejoy book rarely has an adaptation changed the whole feel of a character so much.


On TV, Lovejoy was a loveable rogue, prepared to do a bit of forgery, delighted with adultery, but always prepared to help people out.
The original is significantly darker, Yes, he's still a forger, still a woman's man, but he spends much of his time in fear, and has been known to kill in selfdefence or revenge.
Oh and he's not a smooth southerner, he's a roughedged Lancastrian,

In this particular book he doesn't have to but it doesn't prevent there being four violent deaths in the story.


However, if you don't mind that darker feel, it's a delight, This is one of the better of the more modern Lovejoy books, with a wonderfully complex scam, a messy plot with a vast array of characters and some surprising twists.
The other thing you don't get from the TV show is that Jonathan Gash piles in fascinating factoids, many but not all about antiques.
My only slight concern with these is that he does make one very visible factoid error, referring to the Mary Celeste as the 'Marie Celeste', which makes you wonder about the accuracy of the rest and one or two may be made up but it still adds to the fun, I am big fan of these books, ever since I read 'Ten Word Game' this year.
I love his style, dialogue and of course Lovejoy, : Not as great as 'Possessions of a Lady' but still better than most stuff out there now, Meh. Lovejoy is a sort of knowitall actually doitall but was too unappealing to be the antihero as intended, The asides about the histories of particular antiques and why they are valuable was interesting but not enough to rescue this book for me.


I read it on the recommendation of my used book dealer when I told her I liked Sarah Caudwell and John Mortimer.
I suspect Lovejoy's heavy Brit vernacular was the connection in her mind, But it lacked the "rapistlike wit" of the aforementioned authors,

It was a quick read otherwise I would not have finished it, Still pining for the mystery novel that entrances,

See Dumb and Dumber Started reading this on holiday in Donegal, funny and interesting as I volunteer in Oxfam shop and always looking out for likely antique finds coming in! Will release here in Donegal when I have finished.
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I loved this book mainly for the style! The story became very involved and complicated by the antique underworld slang, though some of it was explained.
But I enjoyed the part where he went to Guernsey as I have been there on holiday, Lent to a nonBC friend she would love it but is not really into computers, and will prossibly get it back OK for releasing again.

Not as much fun as most other mysteries, This is the original Lovejoy, not the same person as in the tv series, He knows antiques and shares his knowledge, and that's very interesting, Things just don't go very well for him, I like a better moralled main character, and not everything going wrong, so this was not my kind of story.
Im a bit disappointed in this book, It started really interesting, was humorous, got tons of information on history and antiques, There was murder mystery, sneaking to thieve antiques, East Anglian shenanigans, . Then, sometime after page, the storytelling, by then so interesting, slowed down and the plot went nowhere, There were still new ideas taking shape in Guernsey, interesting characters had been introduced this time not too many but I was wondering why was nothing made of these.
The humour was gone. The place seemed vague, indescript, Granted, im not a native English speaker so I miss things Then the character storylines were suddenly cut, people vanished from the story, the murderers were “punished” and it just was over all too quickly.
I guessed the killer, which was worse, Granted, I had read the book when it first came out, Still,/of the book was interesting, it just became a flat “ pancake “ in the end, the story petering out.
As if the author had run out of new ideas but just kept going, I wondered why not use the wonderful material he had and finish something likepages earlier, Oh and why the characters that are given most pages always have to be the rich and the famous, the “high rollers”, you know, why not the really more complex but “ordinary” characters, such as Dove the disabled painter for instance.
They could have given a touch of humanity to the story that ended up somehow hollow, I guess losing track of these characters that the author does at some point in his storytelling is a bit similar to Lovejoy, because he, too, throws away perfectly good relationships and discards them when he could benefit tremendously from them in the way of human relationships.
Oh, and I had no idea in the end what was the treasured Antique here, Lovejoy's search for a missing painting and a missing friend Gesso the cat burglar takes him on a wild adventure to the Channel Islands.
He hopes to keep a low profile by masquerading as Jonno Rant, an island local, but that plan backfires when the local police start to keep tabs on him and the real Jonno Rant shows up.
Can Lovejoy stay one step ahead of Rant and the police Soon, just staying alive becomes a juggling act for the irrepressible Lovejoy.
Didn't Finish Not really finished, because I put it down about/ths of the way through with a big old Who Cares! The really annoying thing is that the author has a long, long list of books he's written.
If only I could stand this book enough to finish it, there would be plenty more where that came from.
But the selfconscious attempts at quirkiness and humor fell way flat for me, Hated it, bugged by it, et leavemealone cetera, Jonathan Gash's humor comes through in this Lovejoy mystery more so than others I've read in the series, His bed romping might turn some readers off a product of the times the book was released but the mystery and laughs are good enough to keep you going.
My local library didn't have LovejoyThe Judas Pair, so I settled for, It's full of witty dialog and hilarious narration by the antihero, but the plot's weak, The ending is exciting but mildly disappointing in that Lovejoy needs considerable luck to muddle through, It satisfied my curiosity about the differences between character in the TV adaptation and the

books but wasn't entertaining enough to make me read any more of the series.
When I picked up this book at the used book sale, I knew nothing about Lovejoy, Apparently there is a long series of Lovejoy books more than, plus a TV series, Its British. It is so British that when Lovejoy started to speak, I could barely understand him, what with the unfamiliar slang.
At times this American reader encountered about one new word per page, and I pride myself on my above average vocabulary.
Well, its even larger now, Lovejoy is a character. Lovejoy is an antiques expert, He is extremely knowledgeable about glazes and manufacturing processes and historical oddities, but his true gift is that he can “sense” a genuine valuable antique by some supernatural means.
He is a “divvy. ” He divines it. The valuable pieces call to him, and he loves them, Unfortunately Lovejoy is always broke, and always in trouble, He never minds making a little forgery, “liberating” an item from an owner that does not appreciate it, and he spouts lies with effortless ease.
He also spouts all kinds of pronouncements about life in general, the antiques business, women, gardening, scientific studies, and many other subjects, and these pronouncements are often funny.
He is undoubtedly a rogue, but is apparently a loveable rogue, as he has friends all over, and he beds a string of women.
Some of them hold grudges, but many owe him favors,

In this book no, I can hardly bear to sum up the plot, It is so convoluted that I hardly can, But there is a priory in the English countryside that goes broke, There is a bubbling mud pool, There is a valuable painting that is stolen from the priory, and then stolen back again, On the island of Guernsey Lovejoy meets a crazy lady who paints the same picture over and over again.
He meets a family of antiques forgers, whose paralyzed daughter paints objects using a brush in her teeth, There are almost as many characters as there are slang words, He is beaten up. He is arrested for impersonating a show business producer, and his punishment is to follow through and put on the show he claimed he had planned.
Along the way some people get shot, and miraculously, one of them is not Lovejoy, He ends the book where he began, alone and with nothing, and ready to start the madness all over again in the next book.

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