JONATHAN GASH – Firefly Gadroon. Lovejoy #6. St. Martin’s, US, hardcover, 1984. Penguin, US, paperback, 1985. Published previously by Collins, UK, 1982.

   Jonathan Gash’s Lovejoy series is one you will either adore or viscerally dislike.

   Lovejoy is immersed in the world he loves — that of antiques, legitimate or fake. (His own run heavily to the latter.) For Lovejoy, antiques are everything — well, nearly everything. His secondary passion is women. Readers who share Lovejoy’s first fascination will be rewarded with descriptions of, for example, hammering a reverse silver gadroon (oval fluting) or identifying Shibayama knife handles.

   In auction scenes, Gash takes his fans into the English village world of off-the-wall bids, “miffs,” “nerks,” “groats,” those who “pong” or “do a beano,” and the “cackhanded,” “narked,” or “sussed.”

   Lovejoy is charming and not above bending the law or the truth in the pursuit of a true antique. The romantic escapades and amours of this sprightly rogue are a delight. But for readers with no interest in or prior knowledge of antiques, the unexplained trade slang and the unabating discussion of old treasures can be overwhelming and tedious.

    Firefly Gadroon is the sixth in the series. Lovejoy’s trouble begins — as it often does — when he spots a luscious woman with beautiful legs at an auction. The object of his admiration “frogs” (gets) a small Japanese box he’s had his eye on, and not only will she not sell it to him, she doesn’t even appear to know its value.

   Why, then, does she insist on keeping it? That question leads Lovejoy into encounters with killers, police, international smugglers, and, of course, still more beautiful women. Lovejoy is at his roguish best in this adventure, and the background is as colorful as ever.

   The first Lovejoy novel, The Judas Pair (1977), involves a hunt for a lost pair of sinister dueling pistols. In The Vatican Rip (1982), the dealer undertakes the tricky task of stealing a Chippendale table from the Vatican. And in Pear\hanger (1985), Lovejoy tries his hand at locating a missing person — and ends up suspected of murder.

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   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.