Books That Crack Into Art Theft

What is one of the greatest crimes occurring in the world today? Terrorism, corruption, money laundering? Would you believe ... art theft?

According to the FBI, art theft, "fraud, looting, and trafficking across state and international lines" costs about $6 billion every year - it's big business. Since I recently led a book discussion of the title, Museum of the Missing by Simon Houpt, I have become obsessed with the crime of art theft. This book offers an intriguing tour through the underworld of art theft. The volume is beautifully written and generously illustrated and tells a story as fascinating as any crime novel. It's a gripping page-turner featuring everything from wartime plundering to modern-day heists, from examining criminals' motivations to a look at the art detectives who spend their lives hunting them down.

One art detective, Robert K. Wittman, who was mentioned in Museum of the Missing, often risked his life as the FBI's chief art hunter and undercover art agent for many years. He takes readers along on the hunt for stolen masterpieces in his own book entitled Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World's Stolen Treasures. To help solve the theft of 18 paintings worth $50 million stolen from the home of a Spanish billionaire, he writes:
"I'd be entering another hotel room across town.
To meet a desperate, possibly homicidal gangster eager to close a $10 million deal.
Unarmed.
Dangling a million euros cash as bait.
Working with an FBI partner in his first undercover case.
Negotiating in French, a language I didn't understand.
Swell."
The bait worked.

Everybody loves a mystery, so after reading these books, what really intrigues me is the mystery of who stole $500 million in art from Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum on March 18, 1990 and it is just plain maddening. A journalist, Ulrich Boser, took up the chase after inheriting the case files of art-theft-detective Harold Smith of Lloyds of London, who pursued the Gardner "caper" for years until his death in 2005. Boser became as obsessed as Smith and wrote The Gardner Heist which does not solve the case, but comes very close. He found an important but long-ignored witness in a persuasive case against the man he thinks did it. Boser believes the Gardner paintings will reappear - stolen masterpieces have turned up after decades, even centuries.

I enjoyed these books because, as I said, I'm obsessed. However, if you have only a passing fancy in art theft and art crime and only want to read one book on the topic, I recommend, The Rescue Artist: A True Story of Art, Thieves, and the Hunt for a Missing Masterpiece by Edward Dolnick. This book focuses on the famous art theft of Edvard Munch's The Scream, one version of which was pilfered from the National Gallery of Norway in Oslo in 1994. This famous heist is the centerpiece, but Dolnick interweaves other fascinating stories of famous art thefts including the Mona Lisa stolen from the Louvre in 1911. Dolnick goes out of his way to give us a portrait of Charley Hill, the most famous art detective in the UK, a former Fulbright scholar and cop. The Rescue Artist also offers readers a biography of the artist Edvard Munch and explores the issues of why thieves steal art. So, if you are an art lover, a true crime reader, or like me, fascinated with the dark world of art theft and museum thievery, this is the book for you!

Visit the Readers Services desk for additional art caper titles. Even though it's hard to beat the real-life adventures of missing art, check out my next blog for a wealth of fiction titles and authors who write about art and crime.