Customer Reviews

Faces in the Pool: A Lovejoy Mystery (Lovejoy Mysteries)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

When his antique scam failed, Lovejoy is sent to prison for his con. However, Ellen Jaynor, owner of The Anglers Manglers Speed-Datery offers to get him out of jail immediately if he agrees to marry temporarily millionaire Laura Moon. In fact Laura wants Lovejoy to find her former spouse, but he smells a rat in which he will be left holding the crap when the ex is killed.

His apprentice Lydia and his son Mortimer persuade him to at least attend the antiques convention of the sixteen groups representing the world's Lost Tribes. They want him to authenticate their antiques. However, nothing goes right as Mortimer is kidnapped and the edifice storing the artifacts is burned to the ground. However, the worst is watching his beloved sail off into the sunset with her lover and the booty from the Lost Tribes' valuables. Jail seems safer.

The story line is all over the place as Jonathan Gash proves chaos theory can be fun to read inside a crime caper. The cast is strong as Lovejoy is his usual roguish self as nothing is quite what it seems or goes right. Not for everyone as the dots don't connect in a simple easy to follow way as B does not follow A, or precede C; fans who enjoy mass pandemonium will want to read convoluted Faces in the Pool.

Harriet Klausner

I've read bad reviews for this book. I suppose there are critical people everywhere, but like all of Gash's Lovejoy mysteries, this one starts the hilarity on page one and it never stops. Who doesn't love the scruffy, incompetent, larcenous and endearing character? Gash can get more into a sentence than other writers can squeeze into two paragraphs.

Lovejoy is in prison but not for long - he is released to participate in a speed-dating service and is wanted as a groom. A bewildering cast of characters and non-stop action will keep the reader in a pleasant state of befuddlement as Lovejoy works to figure out what is going on and what does it all have to do with antiques. Faces in the Pool is the latest in a series and long-time readers will be shocked and surprised by the ending they won't want to miss. New readers will appreciate Lovejoy even more by reading earlier novels for the backstory on some of the characters. A thoroughly good read by Jonathan Gash.

I am a big Lovejoy fan (everyone interested in antiques should be a fan) and was glad to see this come out after the Ten Word Game in 2001. Far too long - even the local book chain stopped carrying the series. The author was off on the Clare Burtonall mysteries, which I haven't read, so am not sure of his artistic development over the years. The new Lovejoy book is a mystery in itself. Somehow it reminds me of the 'A Series of Unfortunate Events' books, where every single character without exception switches back and forth in their morality, so you are left wondering exactly what morality really means. In Faces in the Pool, Lovejoy is so completely used then abandoned, back and forth for most of the book that I wonder if there is any humanity left in any of the characters, even the familiar ones from years past. But I want to see more of Lovejoy, especially in his new situation of responsibility set up at the very end of the book. I'd ask the author not to quit this character, but to show us how he copes with the historic past, modern technology, and economics. Don't leave me thinking that East Anglia will never catch up.
It would be really interesting to see Tinker come straight - why he hasn't died of alcoholism by now is another mystery. It's depressing and frankly, a bit tiresome.

Art is always a balance between competing factors: familiar enough to be comfortable, yet challenging enough to be interesting. Rarely is that balance as apparent as it is here, in Jonathan Gash's Faces in the Pool.

Characters jump into conversations when you didn't even know they were present in the scene. Entire plot lines are not only unresolved, but also unexplained. And the language is peppered with obscure and opaque terms that can't be found in any dictionary I'm aware of (even with the term definitions that precede each chapter).

This makes reading the novel awkward and disorienting. The question is: does this make the reading interesting enough to compensate for that confusion? The main character, Lovejoy, is off-balance, unsure of his role in the story and buffeted by other characters who always seem to know more about what is going on than him. The cloudy form of the narrative serves to give you, the reader, insight into Lovejoy's confusion by making you equally hazy about the events of the story.

In the end though, the storytelling is so disjointed, oblique, and nebulous that the reader is prevented from enjoying the redeeming aspects of the novel: the roguish characters, the displaced expatriates, and the antiques. I enjoy a challenging read if there's a payoff that makes it worthwhile. Here, I get the feeling the read is challenging simply due to the author's boredom or vanity.

Ah, Lovejoy. I've read all the other books about him, years ago and have missed him terribly. At last he's back. And he's as good as ever. Sheer enjoyment with a liberal dash of learing about antiques. Do love that man. Keep up the good work and please Mr. Gash, write some more about my favorite black hero.

It seems that Jonathan Gash has run out of steam with this series. There's no plot, the segments don't fit together, even the characters are no fun--unlike the early books in the series, which were delightful. Lydia and Mortimer could not be more boring. The antiques stuff is just cataloging, whereas in the earlier books the information was actually interesting and all of the details of how to fake numerous types of antique were fascinating.

It may be that a series that relies this much on caricature just can't go much farther. If that is the case, I wish Gash would leave Lovejoy to his former glory and try something different...maybe open an antiques store.

This is a very convoluted tale that is much more difficult to follow than any previous of the Lovejoy series that I have read. Characters kept popping up and then disappearing in a way that in the end became not very credible.

Lovejoy has been released from prison again. When he gets out, he meets Laura Moon. Laura is a millionaire. She proposes a joint union with Lovejoy. She offers him a marriage of convenience in exchange for a cut of her riches. Laura tells Lovejoy that her former husband has gone into hiding. She wants to draw him out Lovejoy agrees, though he suspects something is up. Has Lovejoy gotten in way over his head this time?

Faces in the Pool is the latest Lovejoy mystery novel by author, Jonathan Gash. I believe it can be read as a stand alone novel. I thought this book started out good but about midway through the book, I started to lose interest. I did finish the book though. It was a little bit of both the plot as well as the characters. The story jumped around too much for me. Lovejoy seemed very interesting but unfortunately he and I did not make much of a connection. Faces in the Poll is a classic who-dun-it mystery with a few modern twists. Fans of mysteries may enjoy this book.