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

by Edward Dolnick

An art-heist investigation centered on the recovery of Munch’s The Scream

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Regular price $26.86 USD Sale price $17.19 USD
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Paperback New English

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AlbakiReads Editorial

An art-heist investigation centered on the recovery of Munch’s The Scream

Edward Dolnick reconstructs the 1994 theft of Edvard Munch’s The Scream from Oslo’s National Gallery, a crime staged during the opening ceremonies of the Lillehammer Winter Olympics. The account moves from the public embarrassment facing Norwegian police to their reliance on undercover investigator Charley Hill. Framed through Hill’s pursuit of the stolen painting, the book maps the overlap of museum theft, criminal networks, police work, and the international art market. Its central tension lies in a recovery operation whose stakes are professional as well as cultural: returning a famous artwork while navigating an underworld built around its illicit value.

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • True-crime readers interested in art theft and organized criminal networks
  • Readers interested in undercover investigations and police operations
  • Those curious about the art market and the vulnerability of major cultural works

Themes

Art theftUndercover investigationOrganized crimeCultural propertyThe art market

Based on publisher information and book metadata.

Book overview

In the predawn hours of a gloomy February day in 1994, two thieves entered the National Gallery in Oslo and made off with one of the world's most famous paintings, Edvard Munch's Scream. It was a brazen crime committed while the whole world was watching the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer. Baffled and humiliated, the Norwegian police turned to the one man they believed could help: a half English, half American undercover cop named Charley Hill, the world's greatest art detective.

The Rescue Artist is a rollicking narrative that carries readers deep inside the art underworld -- and introduces them to a large and colorful cast of titled aristocrats, intrepid investigators, and thick-necked thugs. But most compelling of all is Charley Hill himself, a complicated mix of brilliance, foolhardiness, and charm whose hunt for a purloined treasure would either cap an illustrious career or be the fiasco that would haunt him forever.

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