Book Reviews: "The Bernini Bust" and "The Last Judgement"

I've decided to depart from typical practice and review The Bernini Bust and The Last Judgement (both by Iain Pears) together since I've read both in the past week and, well, they're pretty much alike anyway. Two more installments in the Art History Mysteries series, these two continue the haphazard adventures of the erstwhile-but-bumbling Jonathan Argyll and the Italian art squad's Flavia di Stefano as they jaunt around trying to solve various crimes somehow related to pieces of art. In these as with Pears' other attempts in this series the plots are fairly conventional and the writing doesn't approach Pears' more literary works (An Instance of the Fingerpost, for example). But they make for good, quick, weekend reading, and everyone needs that now and again.