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Laddar... The Vatican Rip (1981)av Jonathan Gash
   Ingen/inga Det finns inga diskussioner på LibraryThing om den här boken. The fifth [Lovejoy] mystery (  ) ME_Dictionary | Mar 20, 2020 |  A mystery set in Vatican City involves a commission to Lovejoy to steal an antique table from the Vatican. A highly improbable plot, but the information about antiques - both forgeries and the real thing - give a lot of interest to Gash's stories. Lovejoy wasn't so much the lovable rogue in this one, especially when he walloped an old lady! Although the old lady was just as much a rogue as Lovejoy, it was shocking. It appears there were no adverse effects so maybe it didn't hold any force. The rest of the story was ok, but this episode stuck in my mind. (  )1  VivienneR | Mar 27, 2016 | http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2000448.html Lovejoy is at his most psychopathic here, gratuitously violent to bad guys and to women, and so utterly besotted with antiques as to be unaware of any other person's feelings. Gash redeems the novel as a reading experience with loving detail on Rome, on the Vatican and on Lovejoy's audacious plan to rip an exhibit from the tightly guarded city-state, and also by Lovejoy getting a mildly comical if emotionally improbable comeuppance at the end, after the bad guys have met their just deserts. But I think the narrator's sheer unpleasantness makes it a weaker entry in the series. (  ) nwhyte | Oct 7, 2012 | Antique dealer/sharpster sent to knock over Vatican. Amusing, unlikely, lots of antique lore. ( ) tzelman | Apr 11, 2008 |
Things are finally looking up for Gash's so-so Lovejoy series--because this new case for seedy, sexy narrator-hero Lovejoy, the savviest antique dealer in East Anglia, shows marked improvement in two vital areas: Lovejoy himself is for the first time more engaging than obnoxious; and his lectures on antiques have now become an integral part of the story, not extraneous interruptions. The setup: an enigmatic toughie named Arcellano blackmails/threatens Lovejoy into undertaking a near-hopeless-mission: he's to steal a Chippendale rent table (supposedly Arcellano family property) from. . . the Vatican! Impossible--even with the crash-course in Italian which Arcellano forces Lovejoy to take. But Lovejoy knows he'd better come through or else--because soon after he gets to Rome, his contact turns up dead in the Colosseum (apparently killed by Arcellano's thugs). So the caper is on: Lovejoy gets himself a base of operations by working for a comically intrigue-ridden antiques shop; he gets street-wise help from local thief Anna (who masquerades as an old crone); and the heist involves a faked medical emergency in a cafeteria near the Vatican Museum, a fake Chippendale constructed by Lovejoy, and considerable acrobatics. Plus: a not-really-surprising twist (who is Arcellano really?) waiting at the end. All in all, the best Lovejoy yet: not very plausible--but active, amusing, lightly informative, and without the snarling/macho posing which has been such a turn-off in previous outings.
CRIME & MYSTERY. I always think that a genuine friend is like a genuine antique - you'd go a long way to find one and you'd do anything to stop one getting broken. When an Italian gentleman made me an offer I couldn't refuse, stopping my friends from getting broken meant stealing a very valuable antique. 'Somebody else has got my antique and I want it back,' was how he put it. 'Who has it?' I asked. Without a flicker of a smile he replied, 'The Pope.' If you think of the Vatican as a big church where the Pope lives, then think again. It is a complete walled city with its own shops, its own bank and its own armed security in the shape of the ridiculously costumed Swiss Guards. Look a bit daft, don't they? But they're well trained and well armed young men. Well, if stealing antiques from the Pope was easy, everybody would be doing it, wouldn't they? Inga biblioteksbeskrivningar kunde hittas. |
 Google Books — Laddar...Populära omslagBetygMedelbetyg: (3.54)
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