September Books 15) The Vatican Rip, by Jonathan Gash
Haven't been well enough to do anything but read today, and have therefore got through a number of books, the first being this tale of Lovejoy going to Rome to steal an antique table from the Vatican Museum. Lovejoy is at his most psychopathic here, gratuitously violent to bad guys and to women, and so utterly besotted with antiques as to be unaware of any other person's feelings. Gash redeems the novel as a reading experience with loving detail on Rome, on the Vatican and on Lovejoy's audacious plan to rip an exhibit from the tightly guarded city-state, and also by Lovejoy getting a mildly comical if emotionally improbable comeuppance at the end, after the bad guys have met their just deserts. But I think the narrator's sheer unpleasantness makes it a weaker entry in the series.