Master Thieves the Boston Gangsters Who Pulled Off the Worlds Greatest Art Heist

A new look at a legendary art heist in 'Master Thieves' by Stephen Kurkjian

Empty frames remained on brandish in 2011 at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, more than 20 years afterwards thieves took thirteen works of art. including "Storm on the Ocean of Galilee," which had been in the spot at left, by Rembrandt, and "The Concert," by Vermeer. (Josh Reynolds/AP)

Twenty-five years agone this week, equally Boston's St. Patrick'south Day revelries eased into the wee hours of March 18, 1990, two men impersonating police officers entered the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and made off with thirteen works of art valued at upwards to $500 1000000. Information technology is the most expensive art heist in U.S. history and is currently the 2d-longest unsolved case on the FBI's "Top Ten Art Crimes" list. That the Gardner theft is nevertheless an open up case is a "disgrace," according to journalist Stephen Kurkjian, who draws on fresh evidence in "Master Thieves" to reveal his ain chief suspect, tell the full story of the theft and perhaps hasten the missing works' return.

Kurkjian clearly knows how to work his beat — he won three Pulitzer Prizes while at the Boston World. For this book, he interviewed depression-level criminals long suspected of the criminal offence and he reached out to mob bosses for answers. And virtually impressive, he delivers the story of Louis Royce, who discovered the museum's security lapses while sneaking into the galleries during his troubled teen years. Royce claims that he passed that information along to his criminal connections and that someone picked upward his tip and carried out the heist.

Placing the theft in historical context, Kurkjian charts the evolution of Boston'due south gang wars in the 1980s and details how criminals take used stolen art to deal plea deals. He also looks at the Gardner's security issues, everything from troubles with the museum's board to personnel lapses, and he examines failures in the FBI's treatment of fine art crimes, building stark comparisons to more-successful European approaches. Notorious gangster Whitey Bulger's story lurks forth the edges of the narrative, and Kurkjian argues that Bulger's capture in 2011 and the chase for the Boston Marathon bombers in 2013 provide models for how crowdsourcing might exist used to locate the missing Gardner masterpieces. Kurkjian has gathered so much information that explaining the smallest bit of it leads to a spate of cantankerous-references, qualifications and digressions.

Unfortunately, this hurts as much as it helps. People and events are frequently mentioned casually earlier being formally introduced or explained. Several stories are repeated, occasionally several times, with similar phrases; for case, a tense endmost scene when a key doubtable asks Kurkjian to turn off his recorder might have held some suspense if Kurkjian hadn't told the same story 86 pages earlier. Structural choices — and mayhap bulldog competitiveness — farther tedious the storytelling. Equally the section on "The Heist" transitions to "The Search," readers might expect to plunge into the investigation, but Kurkjian leaps instead to 1997, when Tom Mashberg, then at the Boston Herald, reported that he'd seen ane of the stolen paintings — a merits that has been largely discredited. Equally for the revelation about the identities of these master thieves, Kurkjian's detective work yields promising claims, simply the FBI seems uninterested when he delivers his findings. Kurkjian never discovers why — and we're left similarly in the nighttime.

Has "Boston'due south last best secret" finally been explained? For at present, those frames at the Gardner withal hang empty. To that end, "Primary Thieves" may be less the "final chapter" of this story than just the next ane.

"Master Thieves: The Boston Gangsters Who Pulled Off the World'southward Greatest Art Heist" past Stephen Kurkjian (PublicAffairs/PublicAffairs)

Taylor writes mystery stories and teaches at George Mason University.

MASTER THIEVES

The Boston Gangsters Who Pulled Off the World's Greatest Art Heist

Past Stephen Kurkjian

PublicAffairs. 272 pp. $25.99

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Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/a-new-look-at-a-legendary-art-heist-in-master-thieves-by-stephen-kurkjian/2015/03/12/f713a70a-c67d-11e4-a199-6cb5e63819d2_story.html

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