Second paragraph of third chapter:
Dusk fell when I still had about four miles more to go. needed to borrow some matches so I called in at an antiques shop in Dragonsdale, a giant metropolis of seventeen houses, three shops, two pubs and a twelfth-century church. That’s modern hereabouts. Liz Sandwell was just closing up. She came out to watch me do the twin oil-lamps on the Ruby. Well, you can’t have everything. Liz is basically oil paintings and Georgian incidental household furnishings. She has a lovely set of pole-screens and swing dressing-mirrors.
Having been rereading the Agatha Christie novels, I realised that I still had an unread Lovejoy novel from years ago on my shelves. And actually I realise now that I had read it even more years ago, but it’s short and digestible.
This is the Lovejoy of Gash’s original conception, fanatically obsessed with antiques and fatally attractive to women, who he treats badly. In fact he hits one of his girlfriends on page 2 (though in fairness she hits him first). If you pick this up expecting the gentle humour of Ian Le Frenais’ writing and Ian McShane’s acting, well, you’ll be surprised.
At the same time, I think the writer is fully aware of Lovejoy’s flaws and shows us what a monster he is, through his own lack of self-perception. And the actual plot of the book is a murder mystery, where Lovejoy is motivated by righteous rage when a friend is killed and the police write it off as an accident. I found the actual mystery resolution a bit opaque, but there is a fantastically well written climactic scene in Colchester Castle, where Lovejoy and his charming newly hired apprentice Lydia take on the villain, Lydia making her first of many appearances here.
There’s also a fair bit of lore about the Holy Grail – this book was published in 1979, three years before The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, but after at least two of the three BBC documentaries that it drew on (from 1972, 1974 and 1979). Not to go into details, but it had me checking Wikipedia for the career of Hester Bateman, one woman for whom Lovejoy has the highest respect.
Anyway, the protagonist’s extreme sexism means that the book has aged very badly, but you can get The Grail Tree here.
