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

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

• 
  Jo

  Loved this book; the writing was engaging, the stories were great, etc. etc. Content gets 5 stars.
  
  However, the lack of any organization to the story did frustrate me a bit. I am okay with (even fond of) stories that jump all over the place when it serves some aesthetic, quirky, or endearing purpose. This did not. The overarching story is about the theft and recovery of The Scream. Dolnick also includes other anecdotes and adventures of the detective Charley Hill. As a side note, this does read more like a compressed biography of Charley Hill than of the overall story of the Scream theft. This is all well and good and I thoroughly enjoyed all the narrative, however it jumps around like a spastic bunny rabbit. Here's a chapter about the Scream. Here's 2 chapters about other thefts. Oh and next we have a chapter that starts out about the Scream, but ends up about a Rembrandt theft. Then we pick up the Scream story again, just when I have forgotten all the names and have to figure out who is a thief and who is undercover.
  
  Bottom line; loved it, will probably reread eventually, but just give me order, dammit!
• 
  Saleh MoonWalker

  Onvan : The Rescue Artist: A True Story of Art, Thieves, and the Hunt for a Missing Masterpiece - Nevisande : Edward Dolnick - ISBN : 60531177 - ISBN13 : 9780060531171 - Dar 270 Safhe - Saal e Chap : 2005
• 
  J.

  Like the Dolnick book on the Vermeer forgeries, this stacks up as a compendium of art-world scam and theft alongside of the central thread, which is about the Munch's Scream theft.
  
  This time out, though, the compendium aspects outweigh the central thread, and by a long shot. The real value of the book is in the asides, the comparisons, the sidebar items. There, the depth of the research really shows, in spite of an overdeveloped appreciation of the main character, (who obviously charmed the author to pieces) the Scotland Yard investigator.
  
  While it sounds like therefore the book isn't worth the read--- well, no, it's very worth it. It's not any less fascinating just because it's a thin story to hang the wealth of info from....
  
  As mentioned elsewhere, there is something of a kinship in the creation of art and the forging or theft of art. Both are a kind of Confidence Game. These similarities are brightly underlined in this book and the Vermeer title; if you're intrigued by the relationship, I recommend you read both books, which are really like two volumes of the same study.
• 
  Siria

  An interesting, if slightly meandering, look at the world of high-value art theft and in particular the infamous theft of one of the versions of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” in 1994. Edward Dolnick clearly found the lead investigator, Charley Hill, more interesting and charming than I did, though.
  
  (Part of the book deals with the farcically frequent thefts of art from Russborough House in Ireland. This created some of the bigger irritations of the book for me. Dolnick refers to it as “British” (no) and describes Glandore in Cork as being “outside Dublin” (technically true, but a little like saying that NYC is “outside Boston”). The audiobook narrator had apparently never spoken to an Irish person in his life, given the occasional burst of cod-Oirish accent and the persistent inability to pronounce Martin Cahill’s name.)
• 
  Jennifer S. Alderson

  What an incredible story! This is as thrilling as some of your better fiction reads, yet is all true. I would love to have a beer with Charley Hill.
  Highly recommended for anyone interested in learning more about how real art detectives work.
• 
  Ms.pegasus

  Dolnick's well-researched book, written in 2005, tells two stories. The first is an art heist. On Feb. 12, 1994, two men propped up a ladder to the second floor of the National Gallery in Oslo. There was little grace or subtlety in their movements. On his first attempt, the thief scaling the ladder took a tumble! Afer re-ascending he smashed the window with a hammer and detached the targeted painting from the wall with a pair of wire-cutters (which he left behind!). He then shoved the painting down the ladder to his confederate. The painting was Edvard Munch's The Scream.
  
  Dolnick treats his readers to fascinating details and speculations about both Munch, a severely depressed psychotic, and the paintings that reflected his haunting dreams. The paintings were powerful examples of a new movement. Once jeered at by both critics and the public, they are now emblematic of expressionism.
  
  The second story Dolnick tells is a biography of a complicated Scotland Yard undercover detective named Charley Hill. Hill was the primary architect and player in the scheme to recover The Scream three months later. Hill posed as an American art connoiseur and upper echelon employee of the Getty Art Museum. Despite his Anglo-American parentage, Hill needed to consciously suppress any British colloquialisms and mannerisms at all times. He was entrusted with half a million dollars to purchase the purloined painting but needed to insure that he was obtaining the authentic item and not a cheap forgery.
  
  Dolnick's goal is to transport the reader into the tension-filled and dangerous vibe that permeated the negotiations. Moreover, there were numerous glitches that could easily have gotten Hill killed or doomed the operation to humiliating failure. Dolnick reviews a number of other notorious art thefts to illustrate the mindset and dodgy connections of the people involved in this sort of crime. He highlights the combination of paranoia and greed that makes them dangerous. He also provides extensive biographical details about Hill's career which illustrate his complicated personality. Hill is a genuine art lover with a good eye for detail. His intellect is narrowly focused on the minutiae yielded in art history tomes. He is also an adrenaline junky who thrives on the cat-and-mouse confrontations with dangerous criminals that form the core of his work. He stands apart from his colleagues in that he subscribes to the goal of rescuing the art objects rather than capturing the criminals.
  
  These detours are often frustrating. The narrative only really picks up momentum when Dolnick returns to the details of the recovery operation. Impossible to imagine bungling forces Hill to improvise on the spot – yet another talent he fortunately had cultivated over the years.
  
  Despite a successful outcome, Dolnick ends on a pessimistic note. As long as prices for art continue to skyrocket and institutions lack both the cash and the will to institute sophisticated protective measures, art theft will remain the low-hanging fruit of the criminal world.
• 
  Jan

  This is one of the most boring books I've ever read. I was fastinated by the first chapter, describing in detail how the famous painting, "The Scream", was stolen from the National Museum in Norway. I managed to stay with the rest of the book only because I wanted to find out if the painting was recovered, and how. Unfortunately, the author kept backtracking and side stepping, going into incredibly tedious detail about other famous paintings that had been stolen. To save my sanity, I had to finally skip some of the pages toward the end, because the story just wasn't getting anywhere. I caught up with it in the last couple of chapters, and didn't feel I'd missed anything important. Glad it's over.
• 
  Will Horvath

  After looking through the reviews of The Rescue Artist on Goodreads, there seemed to be mixed feelings about this book. The majority were positive, as the book was an average of 3.77 out of 5 stars. This number proves this book is a good read since the average cumulated from over 2,600 reviews. Since the book brings different elements together, like the Winter Olympics, famous paintings, and crime mysteries, I agree with Kendra, who gave the book 5/5 stars. Other reviews mentioned how involved they felt in the reading and seemed to get a good idea of who Charley Hill is.
  On the other hand, some readers didn’t vibe with this book. After going over some of the 1/5 star reviews, a similarity seemed to be the unnecessary depth the author took on the art pieces themselves. One went to the extremity of calling this one of the most boring books ever as the author went into too much detail on the paintings. According to one reviewer, Caroline, it was a great story but had too much language. I believe if art history is not your cup of tea, then this book is not for you. It is unfair to critique this book if the topic itself isn’t something that interests you. Some reviewers followed my idea as they simply put the book down since it wasn’t getting the juices flowing. Overall, the people had mainly pleasant remarks about The Rescue Artist; however, there will always be the haters.
  The type of reader who would be most interested in this book would be either a history buff, artistic person, or mystery lover—these three categories sum of the book’s theme. I’ll start by combining history with art since this book features many world-famous pieces of art. Anyone intrigued by old paintings will love this book as, as mentioned earlier, the book goes into fine detail about each painting’s past. It adds just enough art history to be both entertaining and educational. If art isn’t your go-to reading topic, don’t leave just yet. The book still has a mysterious plot as it goes through the recovery process of Edvard Munich’s The Scream. It balances between Hill’s (the detective) life in this field of work and other art theft stories.
  A weakness of the book is it takes some time to get into. If you are waiting for the plot to develop, it doesn’t occur right away. Rather, the first half is heavy towards the art’s history. Going along with this is the detail the author goes into on the artworks. This can be a pro or con depending on the reader’s interests. I think the book has many strengths that I covered previously. In conclusion, I believe the book is a hit or miss depending on the reader, but worth a shot if you are looking for a read.
  
  
  
  
  
• 
  Megan

  I've decided that art theft books are becoming my new thing. Just finished this one up last night. It was really good, though a bit confusing at points because of all the names. Maybe I was reading it too fast.
  
  It's the story of Charley Hill, a Scotland Yard undercover police officer, who recovered Edvard Munch's The Scream after it was stolen off Oslo museum walls in 1994. Dolnick weaves the recovery story through stories of Hill's life as well as stories of other art thefts and recoveries. It's suspenseful, educational and entertaining.
• 
  Caroline

  It had a great story, but there was too much language.
• 
  Jim

  I have always been fascinated with art heists, and this book covers (mostly) one of the more infamous ones. A lot of the information, as well as coverage of other notable thefts and personalities, I have read about before, but still there were interesting tidbits and material I was unfamiliar with. At times I felt the text was padded and could have been more streamlined, but overall I enjoyed the book.
• 
  Lauren

  This book was like...Ocean's 11 meets Monuments Men, meets Billionaire's Vinegar. Full of swashbuckling thieves, a now-nostalgic 1990's era, millions of dollars of, incidentally, priceless art, and a reverse Artful Dodger who acts as undercover agent to ingratiate himself in the seedy underbelly of big money theft in order to hang a missing Bruegel back on its rightful wall. The story of the recovery of The Scream is woven in and out of other various tales of big time art theft, dating back a century and up to relatively present day. Dolnick also gives us a pseudo-psychological study of art's hero, Charley Hill, the guy who risks his life for an old canvas and hardly bats an eye. The first half of the book starts out as a page-turner as we are hot on the trail of Munch's masterpiece, but this plotline loses a bit of steam towards the end. That being said, this was an easy read on a fascinating subject, driven by a story that truly compels, even if it runs out of gas by the last page.
• 
  Silvia Cachia

  Non fiction as engaging as a great novel. Dolnick introduced me to a fascinating world of which I knew nothing, the world of art crimes and art rescues. The Scotland Yard real cop, Charles Hills, an unusual person with a fascinating past and outlook to life and his mission in it, was a pleasure to meet.
  
  The book is mainly about the theft of one of the four Scream paintings (the most famous of the four copies by Munsh), and its recovery. Along the main event, Dolnick takes some detours in some chapters to include past cases in which Hills recovered art, and a bit of the history of how art thefts have changed across the centuries.
  
  The book has two sections with generous pictures of some of the works and people mentioned in it. I loved to see how those villains and cops look like, as well as the works of art they managed to steal.
  
  I was transported to Oslo, and London, and also to the minds of these peculiar people, (from art dealers of dubious reputation, to true mafiosos, gangsters, thugs of different nationalities and flavors.
  
  If anything, the book is a bit heavy on language, but if someone talks like that, it won’t be fair to edit the person’s talk, right? Another fascinating factor in the book is the American/British accents. Charles Hills has to maneuver back and forth, depending who he is impersonating, and his act needs to be natural, so he had a couple of difficult situations when the wrong idiom slipped.
  
  I recommend it. I’m going to continue reading more by this author. He seems to deliver good non fiction.
  
  (I have to say that between those two books, The Clockwork Universe was better. Dolnick, maybe because of his science background, was amazing explaining why, when, and how calculus came to be ‘discovered’. He managed to explain difficult concepts without making any part of the book dry or difficult to follow.
  
  He has a new title coming up in June, The Seeds of Life. It sounds like a perfect summer reading to me!
• 
  Audrey Ashbrook

  The Rescue Artist by Edward Dolnick is a non-fiction art crime book following the 1994 break-in and thievery of the masterpiece The Scream (created in 1893) by Edvard Munch. On the case is Charley Hill, an art detective and master of chameleon-like behavior useful for going undercover in order to infiltrate the underground illegal stolen art market and recover masterpieces. 
  
  This was an excellent book. Dolnick not only covers the case of The Scream, but also several other thieveries of other great paintings throughout the years. It was a very fascinating read. Charley Hill was also very interesting to learn about; he was very intelligent and daring, and I can't believe the scrapes he was able to get himself out of. I recommend this book to anyone interested in true art crime. 
• 
  Ben Peyton

  This was a fund read. Apparently, stealing art isn't as hard as I thought it would be. I'm considering a career change now......
  
  Either way, it's a good, quick read and very interesting. It is part-history, part-bio. It looks at the history of art thieves and the world that art thieves work in and it is also a deep-dive into the life of the world's top detective that finds stolen art pieces. I liked this book a lot. I would recommend it.
• 
  Carla

  A favorite subject but the narrative is scattered. Dolnick wants us to understand something about the stolen art ; so detours into paintings & painters are, he thinks, unavoidable. This results in deflecting from the thefts and the rescue artist ,Charlie Hill.
• 
  Pamela Allegretto

  Although the author often went off on tangents, they were such fascinating tangents that I began to look forward to them. This non-fiction reads like a well-crafted fiction.
• 
  Beth

  I just want to point out that my profile pic is a comic version of the central artwork of this book. 😉
• 
  Debbie

  This is the second book I read by this author -I know I will read others. He is funny and engaging - and this one won an Edgar!
• 
  Jennifer Wehling

  Some parts were super interesting and others not so much.
• 
  Abigail Rosselli

  I read this one for my True Crime book and it definitely wasn't a book I would normally choose for myself. I'm super into art, but it was SUPER interesting how "artnapping" is a thing.
• 
  Elliot

  I'm on a bit of a kick reading lots of books about the dark economy and a wealthy people hiding money and buying privilege the same way organized crime does, and this book fits into that pattern. It's an interesting account of art thieves, but it's very disorganized and bounces all over the place with lots of digressions. Granted, they are interesting digressions, but they are still distracting from the story and make the number of different a people, stories, and timelines a bit hard to follow.
• 
  Julien Farges

  I enjoyed this story! The author kinda weaves in and out of the actual story to talk about art history, which doesn't exactly interest me. But I enjoyed it overall!
• 
  Anne

  I love true stories that take you behind the scenes into passions outside of your own sphere. This is one of them--a suspenseful read about the audacious theft of one of the world's most famous paintings, Edvard Munch's "The Scream", from the National Gellery in Oslo. This book is about the art world's underground, and about the world's greatest art detective who tracks down the thieves.
  
  "The thief turned to "The Scream"--it hung only a yard from the window--and snipped the wire that held it to the wall. "The Scream", at roughly two feet by three feet, was big and bulky. With an ornate frame and sheets of protective glass both front and back, it was heavy, too--a difficult load to carry out a window and down a slippery metal ladder. The thief leaned out the window as far as he could and placed the painting on the ladder. 'Catch!' he whispered, and then, like a parent sending his toddler down a steep hill on a sled, he let go. His companion on the ground, straining upward, caught the sliding painting. The two men ran to their car, tucked their precious cargo into the back seat, and roared off. Elapsed time inside the museum: fifty seconds. In less than a minute the thieves had gained possession of a painting valued at $72 million. It had been absurdly easy. 'Organized crime, Norwegian style,' a Scotland Yard detective would later marvel. 'Two men and a ladder!'"
  ....from "The Rescue Artist" by Edward Dolnick
• 
  Jill

  It took me a while to realize that Edward Dolnick, author of The Clockwork Universe, also wrote one of my very favorite books; The Rescue Artist. A non-fiction work that reads like a novel, The Rescue Artist describes the efforts of art detective Charley Hill to recover Edvard Munch's The Scream when it's stolen from Oslo. (During the Winter Olympics, for added drama). Art theft and forgery fascinates me, but I think someone who doesn't have that particular fixation would still enjoy this as a good story. Colorful characters, poignant moments, and a good look at what an "art detective" really is make for an easy but thoughtful read. There's also a little section in the back called "P.S." that features a Q & A with the author about what the real life Hill thought about Dolnick's characterization of him. (He thought that the author heightened the risk of his job, and underplayed his love of art, interestingly. And his mother thought there was too much swearing in the book. :-)
• 
  Kay

  I found this something of a disappointment, especially considering how much I'd enjoyed another book I'd read by Dolnick (Down the Great Unknown). The book lost much of its punch through digressions, and the style didn't seem particularly compelling.
  
  I read this prior to going to Norway in 2007, and of course one of the places we went to was Norway's National Gallery, scene of the thefts. (However, for much more Munchian atmosphere, I'd recommend going to the Munch museum instead.)
  
  The most interesting parts of the book were those that involved Munch and his paintings. I hadn't been aware, for example, that there were multiple versions of "The Scream." (I did know that the lurid sunset was an accurate meteorological depiction -- the eruption of Krakatoa caused such striking red sunsets all over Europe.)
• 
  Taylor

  I'll admit it. I am officially obsessed with learning about art crime, which as Dolnick describes in "The Rescue Artist," is odd in the very way it combines the "grime and the sublime"–the beauty and elevated genius of great art, and the crooked back dealings of thieves and criminals. This book does a great job of retelling the multiple exploits and fabricated personas of Art Squad legend Charley Hill. While the book is supposedly centered around Munch's "The Scream," the book jumps around quite a bit, stopping to explore related subjects along the way, and may be irritating for people trying to follow the main storyline. Still, "The Rescue Artist" gives quite an interesting look at the motives and economics of art thieves.
• 
  Charlie Newfell

  Art theft is rampant, and has been for decades. How can an object worth so much, yet so unique be stolen? Mr. Dolnick does a good job in go over the various reasons why these priceless objects become a frequent object of crime. He highlights a famous case as the common thread through the book, the theft of "The Scream" in Oslo just before the opening of the 1994 Winter Olympics in Norway.
  
  But - there's too little of the thieves and the art. He spends a lot of time describing the "rescue artist", and quite honestly he comes off as the man's biggest fan. When we first meet the detective the description almost seems like a super hero. Too much hero worship, and not enough of the thefts.