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

Charley Hill rescues art. More precisely, he rescues stolen masterpieces. He is Scotland Yard's art recovery man, and perhaps best known for his role in locating Edvard Munch's Scream, stolen from Oslo's National Gallery in 1994. This is the man, and more to the point, the profession, that Edward Dolnick brings to life in Rescue Artist.

Dolnick's portrait (no pun intended) of Hill is colorful, complex, and frankly quite fascinating. Hill regularly goes undercover, you see, assuming and shedding identities - and the requisite personality traits and accents - as the circumstances dictate. Art theft being big business, Charley Hill is rather a busy man. More than being a biography of Hill, though, Rescue Artist examines the underbelly of the art world in detailing numerous heists, from that of the Mona Lisa in 1913 to, of course, the Scream, whose recovery is the centerpiece of this book.

As an aside, one of the thefts Dolnick describes is the one from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston in 1990. Thirteen paintings were swiped and none has been recovered. This is actually the second time I've encountered these particular stolen works of art (the first time was in The Art Forger), so I decided to visit when I was in Boston recently. 1) They didn't know about their cameo in Rescue Artist, which is too bad, as I actually prefer it to the fictional Art Forger. and 2) I overheard a woman asking a docent about the theft. She would have learned more from Dolnick.

But I digress.

In addition to detailing the theft of art, Dolnick also does a remarkable job or writing about its creation. Having read his descriptions of brush strokes and craquelure, canvas creases, and chalk smudges, it's impossible now to look at art without focusing on these elements (at least when you can get close enough to the works to do so, as at the ISGM), which give a painting nearly as much character as its actual composition.

Final Verdict: I really, really enjoyed this book. It should appeal to a wide audience, from art lovers to crime fans. Dolnick's style is fast-paced and his prose is crisp and lively. Four stars.