Pentateuch Jones and the Gothard Bequest (2003)

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.

Pentateuch Jones and the Greenhaven Cutlers (2002)

Cosmo Mandinsky, whoever he is, must certainly know his antiques because he certainly doesn't know his writing. Or crime fiction. Or even really know the English language either. This shameless ripoff of Jonathan Gash's "Lovejoy" novels was published some ten years ago by small Lincolnshire publishing company Beauhelius Press and seems to have done little more than languish in charity shops and public libraries (which is where I found my copies of the two books). I've not read any Lovejoy books but remember the series well and either Mandinsky has strikingly managed to guess some analogies to Gash's books or he's shamefully ripping the things off.

The plot then - what little of it there is - goes like this. Rogueish antique dealer with a twinkle in his eyes, Pentateuch Jones (we don't know his real name! nothing like Lovejoy then!) gets involved in a mystery involving a shadowy guild of livery workers, some shady antiques and some monstrous criminal types. None of it makes much sense, and to be fair to Mandinsky he doesn't particularly try very hard to pretend there is much sense to tease  out of his piecemeal plot. Instead at every turn he tends towards 1. a sex scene 2. a chase scene 3. a fight scene or 4. endless droning on about antiques. In fact these passages are about the only scenes in the whole book that are anywhere near readable.

The rest of it is just a thinly veiled copy of Lovejoy: there's a comely lady member of the gentry who's Jones' gateway to getting involved in the shadowy goings on of the upper classes. There's a comedy hoary old assistant - with the ludicrous name of Tiberius Nibbs (Mandinsky likes his foolish names, which is appropriate for anyone with a name like Cosmo) - who speaks in cliches and Lincolnshire "patois". There's a naive skivvy - "Young" Sam as they constantly call him - who ends up humiliated in dozens of tiresome comedy scenes by everyone involved (I suspect Mandinsky may have an axe to grind with someone called Sam). There are antiques, local comedy colour, pubs, country houses and more antiques.

There is however not a very good book. Avoid.

Raymond Blair

Now there was an artist...

Sibylla Sheldrake

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