The Art Thief
By Michael Finkel
Alfred A. Knopf, 2023. 221 pages. Nonfiction
For centuries, works of art have been stolen in countless ways from all over the world, but no one has been quite as successful at it as the master Thief Stéphane Breitwieser. Carrying out more than two hundred heists over nearly ten years-in museums and cathedrals all over Europe-Breitwieser, along with his girlfriend who worked as his lookout, stole more than three hundred objects, until it all fell apart in spectacular fashion.
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This is a nonfiction book that reads like a cinematic documentary. It’s very fast-paced and extremely fascinating, it truly feels like reading a novel. This story shows how obsession, hubris, luck, and maybe even genius, led to the most prolific Art Thief in history. If you are interested in reading about true crime that doesn’t involve murder or violence in anyway, but is still filled with secrets, lies, deception, and extremely flawed accomplices, this is the story for you. I literally gasped out loud at least twice while reading this book.
If you like The Art Thief, you might also like:
The Feather Thief
By Kirk Wallace Johnson
Viking, 2018. 308 pages. Nonfiction
On a cool June evening in 2009, twenty-year-old American flautist Edwin Rist grabbed hundreds of bird skins - some collected 150 years earlier - and escaped into the darkness. Two years later, Kirk Wallace Johnson was consumed by the strange case of the feather thief. What would possess a person to steal dead birds? This is the gripping story of a bizarre and shocking crime, and one man's relentless pursuit of justice.
The Last Mona Lisa
By Jonathan Santlofer
Sourcebooks Landmark, 2021. 376 pages. Fiction
August, 1911: The Mona Lisa is stolen by Vincent Peruggia. Exactly what happens in the two years before its recovery is a mystery. Many replicas of the Mona Lisa exist, and more than one historian has wondered if the painting now in the Louvre is a fake, switched in 1911. Present day: art professor Luke Perrone digs for the truth behind his most famous ancestor: Peruggia. His search attracts an Interpol detective with something to prove and an unfamiliar but curiously helpful woman. Soon, Luke tumbles deep into the world of art and forgery, a land of obsession and danger. A gripping novel exploring the 1911 theft and the present underbelly of the art world, The Last Mona Lisa is a suspenseful tale, tapping into our universal fascination with da Vinci's enigma, why people are driven to possess certain works of art, and our fascination with the authentic and the fake.
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