The Rich and the Profane by
Jonathan Gash
hbk out April 98
Published by Macmillan
at £16.99
The sleeve of this new Lovejoy novel is something of an indication of what is to come in the text. The name of the author is writ large, much larger than the title of his book. Is this to cater for the reader who is seeking, not a fresh, unexpected text but cosily more of the mixture as before? Here there will certainly be no disappointment.
Our hero, the coyly womanising antique-dealer...of sorts...Lovejoy, set up early in the plot, though he does not then realise it, by a young girl...beautiful, naturally... who wants to learn how to steal a comparatively worthless piece of jewellery from an auction, merely to spite her aunt. This, in roundabout fashion, involves Lovejoy with said aunt...beautiful, naturally... and through her with the enigmatic George Metivier, Prior of Albansham Priory, which we are all led to believe is stuffed with delicious antiques. In even more roundabout fashion this leads Lovejoy, aided by one of his petty-criminal pals, to break into the priory, disastrously as it turns out, since the pal disappears, presumably gruesomely murdered.
Here Lovejoy's well-established sense of loyalty to a friend predictably kicks in and he sets out hot on the trail of justice...or is it vengeance? This trail leads him a merry dance to and through the holiday isle of Jersey and in and out of the arms of assorted women ...beautiful, naturally...as he all the while improvises characters and situations for himself wholesale in his attempts to stay solvent...always a problem for him... to keep one step ahead of the heavies, whoever they are, and to discover the truth. This last task is the trickiest as the plot is extremely involved, so much so that, at one point, Lovejoy is obliged to recapitulate at length on the action, in soliloquy, to clarify his mind and, I suspect, that of the bemused reader. Unfortunately this reader, though usually no slouch in unravelling complex plots, did not find the mind clarifying exercise very successful.
Despite the fogginess of its construction the whole book is written with great pace and gusto, as one would expect from this author, as well as with a very convincing and assured sense of place. It is also, as one would expect, stuffed as full as a Christmas pudding with plums of arcane and not-so-arcane information on the antiques trade, mostly in its murkier aspects.
A highly entertaining read then and enticing to confirmed fans of the picaresque Lovejoy. But it leaves behind a curiously uneasy feeling that the creation has got away from its creator and that Lovejoy, larger than life from his inception, has now turned himself into a caricature of his original persona.
The Rich and the Profane by
Jonathan Gash