The Vatican Rip
1 journaler for this copy...
Later: I... wasn't thrilled with this one. I think Lovejoy is a bit *too* roguish - in the utterly-irresponsible sense - for my taste, and I found his relentless ability to piss people off rather upsetting. Oh, some of it was fun - he mangled a cheating dealer's attempts to foist off fakes, but he only did it because the auctioneer had been rude to his scruffy "finder", not for the sake of justice. When he found himself under severe threats by a big, tough-looking guy and some goons, I couldn't feel very sympathetic, and as the plot wound its way towards an attempted robbery of the Vatican itself, I... got a bit bored. I skimmed through to the end to see what happened, and was rewarded with a spectacularly grisly end to the Big Bad and to the character whom for some reason Lovejoy had trusted all along, while the reader must have known from page 1 was going to betray him.
So... not my cup of tea, though it's hard to put a finger on why. Some combination of writing style, tone, and the main character himself just didn't cut it for me. But hopefully someone else will enjoy it!
[There's a TV Tropes page on the TV series, with some references to the books.]
Released 6 yrs ago (4/4/2017 UTC) at Public Library, 588 Main St. in Dunstable, Massachusetts USA
WILD RELEASE NOTES:
[See other recent releases in MA here.]
*** Released for the 2017 TV Series release challenge. ***