And so to the second Mandinsky crime novel to feature roguish-jack-the-lad-eye-twinkling-charmer-walking-cliche Pentateuch Jones (whether there are more out there is up to you, dear reader. I cannot be bothered to look myself). Not much has improved. Jones still twinkles. His comely pet member of the gentry, Lady Samantha, is still lusting after our hero but nothing happens to ruin the frisson (unlike with almost every other female character who bizarrely throws himself at our charmless hero). Tiberius Nibbs is still a walking bunch of country cliches. "Young" Sam still gets humiliated on an almost ten pagely basis. There are crimes. There are villains. There's some moustache twirling. There's some fights and chases. And there's lots and lots of antiques.
To be fair to Mandinsky, he's bothered to think of a plot this time. It's not a very good one and it wavers wildly between heist, romp, thriller, gothic horror (albeit not very horrifying) and caper with no evidence of anyone in control of the plotting. But he tries. There's some hidden codes and some mysterious cults in it and a lot of old nonsense about conspiracy theories thrown into it which shows that even if he's not done any research he's at least read something in a book which he copied carelessly into his own novel. He failed... but he did try.
Also: finally this volume reveals two theories to be correct. Mandinsky is every bit the silver fox in a leather jacket as his hero is. The description of Jones - jacket, polo neck, scruffy beard, salt and pepper hair, twinkle in the eye, rosy cheeks - is very much the idealised version of the picture on the back of the novel of the author himself. It also proves the man is an antiques' dealer. Let us hope he's better at that than he is at writing crime fiction.
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