Pearlhanger - Jonathan Gash

And here we have the other paperback my daughter picked up for me at the bookstore.

Lovejoy is apparently a well-established mystery-solver. He's obsessed with antiques and no friend to the police. He's a magnet to some women and aggravating to others. In this case, he's trying to figure out something about pearls.

Let's talk about the main character. He must be popular, because this is his ninth mystery. I don't know how people can read this man, some mysteries are beyond solving. Let's just go through a few of his thought processes on women:

1. "I knew that women were born pests...I'm reasonable and tolerant, and they're not. Simple as that."
2. "Not her fault of course that Lydia had so little sense, being a bird and therefore unable to see the main issue with my transparent clarity."
3. "Sometimes I wonder if women aren't incapable of having friends. Maybe by nature they can only make lovers and haters."

Those examples are just a few that I marked close together near the end-ish part of the book. I could go on forever, but there are other things to address. Like the weird plot. A woman comes to Lovejoy and wants help finding her husband. There are seances, antiques, strange sidekicks, and Lovejoy acting like a putz. To everyone. At the end, he's supposedly trying to be some sort of hero by enacting justice on the evildoers I guess. I wasn't sold.

If you take how much I loved Pretty Lady, that's about how much I loathed Pearlhanger. It's not my daughter's fault. The character was just so unlikeable, what was I to do? If it hadn't been given to me out of love and affection, I probably would've thrown it across the room after a few pages. Just eww on this book. Eww.