The Rescue Artist: A True Story of Art, Thieves, and the Hunt for a Missing Masterpiece

An interesting, if slightly meandering, look at the world of high-value art theft and in particular the infamous theft of one of the versions of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” in 1994. Edward Dolnick clearly found the lead investigator, Charley Hill, more interesting and charming than I did, though.

(Part of the book deals with the farcically frequent thefts of art from Russborough House in Ireland. This created some of the bigger irritations of the book for me. Dolnick refers to it as “British” (no) and describes Glandore in Cork as being “outside Dublin” (technically true, but a little like saying that NYC is “outside Boston”). The audiobook narrator had apparently never spoken to an Irish person in his life, given the show more occasional burst of cod-Oirish accent and the persistent inability to pronounce Martin Cahill’s name.) show less

A very good account of the theft of Munch's "The Scream" in 1994, which branches out into an exploration of art heists and a semi-biography of investigator Charley Hill. Well worth a read.

All about how Edvard Munch's "The Scream" was stolen and subsequently recovered. The first chapter alone is like reading an episode of Keystone Kops. Talk about incompetence! Nonetheless, this is fascinating look into the world of art theft, which suprisingly enough often includes books stolen form the world's public libraries. I really think there should be a PBS Mystery series based on the art recovery team at Scotland Yard.

#2020unreadshelfproject. A great read. A intimate look into the world of art theft and long road to recovering the works. So much interesting information packed into the book. Charley Hill has a truly great job. A lot of different thefts and recoveries are mentioned which keeps the book moving. I skimmed over a few parts, but the majority held my interest.

This is a well written book on an interesting subject. I'd give it a 3.5 if they'd let me.

This is not just about one art theft (The Scream by Munch), but about the career, personality and job session of one of Scotland Yard's (now retired) art squad detectives. Well written.

For some reason the main point that sticks out for me is that Dolnick is seriously in love with Charley Hill (the leading man) - or at least severely idolizes him. Dolnick does go off on quite a few tangents about other cases, which are also very interesting, but distracting and just there to make the book longer than it needed to be.