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Review
"Artfully done... Grade: A Minus."--Boston Herald
Product Description
Shortly after midnight on March 18, 1990, two men broke into the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston and committed the largest art heist in history. They stole a dozen masterpieces, including one Vermeer, three Rembrandts, and five Degas. But after thousands of leads, hundreds of interviews, and a $5 million reward, not a single painting has been recovered. Worth as much as $500 million, the missing masterpieces have become the Holy Grail of the art world and their theft one of the nation's most extraordinary unsolved mysteries. Art detective Harold Smith worked the theft for years, and after his death, reporter Ulrich Boser decided to pick up where he left off. Traveling deep into the art underworld, Boser explores Smith's unfinished leads and comes across a remarkable cast of characters, including a brilliant rock 'n' roll art thief and a golden-boy gangster who professes his innocence in rhyming verse. A tale of art and greed, of obsession and loss, "The Gardner Heist" is as compelling as the stolen masterpieces themselves.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Another reviewer at AmazonUSA of this book gave it four stars because he thought the ending was inconclusive - the paintings stolen in 1990 have never been found. Well, that is the fact, and if this book could only end with the recovery, then it wouldn't/couldn't have been written.
Boser writes a very readable tale of art, both purchased and stolen, and the personalities who came together - over a period of about 150 years - to make the Gardner heist the world's largest theft. He writes about the paintings and their provenance and how Isabella Stewart Gardner - an outsized personality - came to collect her art and put together her highly idiosyncratic museum. He writes about the search - ongoing for the past 20 years - to recover the masterpieces and the men and women, who were both victims and perpetrators of the crime.
I enjoyed the book.
Boser writes a very readable tale of art, both purchased and stolen, and the personalities who came together - over a period of about 150 years - to make the Gardner heist the world's largest theft. He writes about the paintings and their provenance and how Isabella Stewart Gardner - an outsized personality - came to collect her art and put together her highly idiosyncratic museum. He writes about the search - ongoing for the past 20 years - to recover the masterpieces and the men and women, who were both victims and perpetrators of the crime.
I enjoyed the book.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
59 reviews
49 of 53 people found the following review helpful
Gripping
25 Feb 2009
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
It's hard to put this book down. Through a bit of serendipity, Ulrich Boser inherited a famed art detective's files on the Gardner Heist. He plunged into this mysterious case, and brings us along for the ride as he explores not only what happened, but why the artwork meant so much to so many both before and after the heist. As the author treads ever closer to cracking the case, you remember that this isn't fiction and start to believe he might get the paintings back - but you also wonder if he might find trouble in this shady underworld. A fascinating read.
25 of 27 people found the following review helpful
Where, oh, where are those masterpieces?
30 Mar 2009
Format:Hardcover
Ulrich Boser's The Gardner Heist: The True Story of the World's Largest Unsolved Art Theft combines several fascinating stories. It re-tells, virtually minute by minute, what is known of how this infamous 1990 art theft was staged. It relates a brief history of the museum's namesake, founder and benefactor, Isabella Gardner. It discusses the paintings that were ripped from the walls and their frames, including Vermeer's The Concert, Rembrandt's The Storm on the Sea of Galilee, and Manet's Chez Tortoni (the photo section provides pictures of them). It examines the security in the museum then and now. It introduces us, through interviews with Boser, to Harold Smith, the most successful art detective of his day. It kicks around the leads and theories that the FBI, police, and private investigators have followed up in the years since the heist. It looks into the lives of some of the men who've been suspected of and investigated for the actual robbery and others who might have the paintings now. The suspects include several vicious members of the underworld, one of whom is currently serving forty years in prison for an unrelated crime, and another who has blotted the FBI's Most Wanted list for years.
The author explains how, after Smith's death (due to illness, not foul play), he, Boser, got caught up in trying to solve the mystery of the paintings and how they might be recovered. Smith had been devoting huge amounts of time to the case; his was a mission bordering on obsession. And he wasn't alone in the hunt. A five million dollar reward lured some, but for others the love of art kept them searching. Boser also caught the Gardner fever, even traveling to another country to scan little seaside villages, hoping to catch sight of the mob boss who might be living there incognito -- perhaps even with the paintings in his home. Eventually Boser realized this quest could get him killed. But before he stopped hunting down every lead, he'd gathered enough evidence to convincingly identify the probable thieves, and he presents it all in The Gardner Heist with journalistic factualism married to an accessible, conversational style.
The story of these missing masterpieces, quite possibly moldering away and perhaps even abandoned somewhere, is sad. But even though Boser's book can't have a storybook, feel-good, ending, anyone interested in the world of art (and crime) shouldn't miss The Gardner Heist.
The author explains how, after Smith's death (due to illness, not foul play), he, Boser, got caught up in trying to solve the mystery of the paintings and how they might be recovered. Smith had been devoting huge amounts of time to the case; his was a mission bordering on obsession. And he wasn't alone in the hunt. A five million dollar reward lured some, but for others the love of art kept them searching. Boser also caught the Gardner fever, even traveling to another country to scan little seaside villages, hoping to catch sight of the mob boss who might be living there incognito -- perhaps even with the paintings in his home. Eventually Boser realized this quest could get him killed. But before he stopped hunting down every lead, he'd gathered enough evidence to convincingly identify the probable thieves, and he presents it all in The Gardner Heist with journalistic factualism married to an accessible, conversational style.
The story of these missing masterpieces, quite possibly moldering away and perhaps even abandoned somewhere, is sad. But even though Boser's book can't have a storybook, feel-good, ending, anyone interested in the world of art (and crime) shouldn't miss The Gardner Heist.
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
I Don't Understand The Bad Reviews
19 Jun 2009
Format:Hardcover
This is a very good, well researched book about the story behind this theft. I don't live far from Boston and have visited the museum twice, once before the theft and once afterward. Everything you'd want to know about this topic is here - a brief history of Isabella Stewart Gardner, discussions about the background of each missing piece, details of the actual robbery, the on-going investigation. The crime hasn't been solved, so of course it's not going to have a happy ending and it's going to end abruptly. The only thing I didn't like was the endless speculation, and ensuing chapters dedicated to it, that the theft has ties to organized crime. But it does - it's no one's fault that the book lost my interest there. I emailed the author a question I had, and he kindly and pleasantly wrote me back shortly thereafter. For anyone interested in this genre, the book Museum of the Missing deals with stolen art, worldwide and throughout history - very good to read after you finish this.
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