Every Last Cent

Lovejoy is certainly enjoying longevity. This is the 22nd novel narrated in the inimitable style of the East Anglian antiques ducker and diver, who endures in print even if the BBC long ago decided that his TV incarnation had delighted us enough. It was a winning format for television - charming rogue with a constant supply of gorgeous girlfriends and eccentric sidekicks, pretty rural locations, mystery-to-solve plotlines and some choice nuggets of insider information about the wicked world of the antiques trade. It works well in the books, too, though the character of Lovejoy is filthier - in every sense of the word - on the page than his sanitised TV persona. However, the discipline of combining the elements of a story into a coherent whole is one that television achieved rather more successfully than the author. Lovejoy is a 'divvy', a man gifted (or possibly cursed) with an intuitive ability to sense the presence of genuine antiques among the forgeries that apparently make up 90 per cent of the 'antiques' in the emporia of Britain. This talent is a central feature of the plot, which is ridiculously complicated - involving Lovejoy's illegitimate son, who also has the gift, shady antiques syndicates, a couple of murders, some burglaries, financial fallout from the Lloyd's insurance crash and forged portraits. Gash also introduces an incredibly large number of eccentric characters, such as the woman who is in love with Leonardo da Vinci, and is prone to (admittedly fascinating) asides on such arcane subjects as Irish pier tables, antique paper, the original inventor of the flush lavatory et al. Coupled with his idiosyncratic style - a dizzying excursion to the outer limits of grammatical usage - this makes for a chaotic but entertaining read, which would have benefitted from a decent editor. (Kirkus UK)