JADE WOMAN

Just finished this book by Jonathan Gash. His hero, antiques dealer/forger/con man Lovejoy, is forced to leave England and ends up in Hong Kong. Gash makes Hong Kong come alive to someone who's never been there, the good along with the bad. Fascinating.

Unfortunately, Lovejoy falls in with the wrong crowd, evidently a common occurrence. He ends up working for the Hong Kong mob with the jade woman of the title as one of its heads. To stay alive, he dreams up a fake impressionist Hong Kong painter, Song Ping, so that he can forge (imaginary) Ping paintings to pass off on the art community.

Oh, and I forgot to say he becomes a gigolo to support himself.

Lots of comedy with lots of insights on the antique business. I enjoyed it.

THE TARTAN SELL

Read my first Lovejoy mystery this week: THE TARTAN SELL.  By Jonathan Gash, the title caught my eye and I picked it up, read a few pages, and immediately got hooked.

I really enjoyed it. Lovejoy is a dealer in antiques (legal and illegal) whose method of deciding the provenance of a piece goes beyond certification. He has a nose for the real antiques.

He seems to have a knack for getting out of one scrape and into another, and, for some reason that mystified me, he also seems to have a way with the ladies, married or not. His moral code may be a little twisty but he does have some ethics. A lovable scamp is what he came across as in this book.

I intend to read some more. I hope they're all as good as this one.