In August 1911 the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre museum in Paris. Vanished Smile recalls the theft, police investigation, and eventual recovery of the painting from the Italian thief who thought he would become a national hero by returning the painting to Da Vinci’s homeland. (He miscalculated!)
The story recalls The Gardner Heist for [...]
Posts Tagged as ‘art’
May 30, 2009
Vanished Smile by R.A. Scotti
May 19, 2009
The Gardner Heist by Ulrich Boser
The Gardner Heist recalls a famous, almost 20-year old and still unsolved theft of a gorgeous Vermeer (and a terrible, in my opinion, Rembrandt, and other assorted masterpieces) from the Gardner Museum in Boston. The theft exposes the weak link of any security system: the people, although to be fair the technology was not quite [...]
December 10, 2008
Loot by Sharon Waxman
If you enjoyed The Forger’s Spell and The Billionaire’s Vinegar, you’ll like Loot, a captivating, if unhinging look at trafficking in art and antiquities. The author starts with well-known dilemmas: should the Parthenon marble frieze (the Elgin marbles) be returned to Athens, to the museum built especially to shelter them? Should the Luxor pyramid be removed [...]
September 2, 2008
The Forger’s Spell by Edward Dolnick
Who knew that a book about art forgery could read like a mystery? The Forger’s Spell tells the story of a second-rate Dutch painter who faked a number of Vermeers and other paintings that were stolen by the Nazis and who got caught as a result of the Allies’ subsequent accounting for the various stolen objects. The [...]
February 19, 2008
The Music Lesson by Katharine Weber
The Music Lesson’s main character is an Irish-American art historian who falls for an IRA member who is also a distant cousin of hers and, inspired by a romantic love of Ireland (which she has never visited before the story begins) helps orchestrate a theft and at least one murder without realizing she’s been played. [...]
