A RAG, A BONE, AND A HANK OF HAIR, by Jonathan Gash

Lovejoy, no first name, is a scruffy English antique dealer who loves the ladies. He's perpetually down on his luck, despite his amazing ability to sense real antiques which makes him a "divvy." He hates the botched frauds of others, yet is often driven by need to create fakes of his own. However, he crafts them with techniques as close to the original as he can, almost an homage.

In RAG, he is commanded to leave his East Anglia home for London by a criminal antique dealer, Dosh Callaghan, who thinks he's been gypped. "Find me who duffed my padpas."

Duff means to fake. Padparadshas, padpas, from Sri Lanka, are sapphires which are odd colored, orangey pink. Gash doles out this information after enlightening us on faking Holbein miniatures, painted on modern ivorine, a plastic, instead of ivory, and after Lovejoy hears the call of a real, beautiful fruitwood box, found in the modest barrow of a dealer in the midst of the Portobello open air market.

Lovejoy completes the job for Dosh suspiciously easily, but finds Colette, a old friend of his who has lost her antique store and is down to rags and a handcart. She's been reduced to this by the brutal Dieter Gluck, who cheated her and drove her husband to the grave. As Lovejoy prepares to work a scam to catch Gluck, he stumbles across the mystery of Colette's teenage son, who can tell real antiques by their touch. The plot takes many leisurely detours into the antiques world, yet we are always rewarded by Gash's enthusiasm.