THE RESCUE ARTIST A True Story of Art, Thieves, and the Hunt for a Missing Masterpiece by Edward Dolnick
"The little-known world of art theft is compellingly portrayed in Dolnick's account of the 1994 theft and recovery of Edvard Munch's iconic painting The Scream. The theft was carried out with almost comical ease at Norway's National Gallery in Oslo on the very morning that the Winter Olympics began in that city.
Despite the low-tech nature of the crime, the local police were baffled, and Dolnick (Down the Great Unknown; Madness on the Couch) makes a convincing case that the fortunate resolution of the investigation was almost exclusively due to the expertise, ingenuity and daring of the 'rescue artist' of the title, Charley Hill, a Scotland Yard undercover officer and former Fulbright scholar who has made recovering stolen art treasures his life's work.
Hill is a larger-than-life figure who seems lifted from the pages of Elmore Leonard, although his adversaries in this inquiry are fairly pedestrian. While the path to the painting's retrieval is relatively straightforward once some shady characters put the word out that they can get their hands on it, the narrative's frequent detours to other crimes and engaging escapades from Hill's past elevate this work ." - Publishers Weekly
"Edward Dolnick has... provided us with an insider's view of the hidden world of art theft, where paintings by old masters are used to settle gambling debts and priceless canvases are rolled up carelessly in the trunk." - Arthur Golden, Author of Memoirs of a Geisha
Harper Collins Publishers, 2005 First Edition, Hardcover with Dust Jacket, 270 Pages, 6" x 9." ISBN 978-0-06-053117-1
Book is in Very Good+ USED condition: Page 85 has a small tear. Dust jacket is in Very Good conditon: Scuffed; edgewear; crease on the front flap.
RELATED ITEMS: North Light Collection 2 Out of the Inkwell Dolly on the Dais - Artist's Model in Perspective