“The Art Thief” by Michael Finkel

This is a rather refined example of a book in the ‘true crime’ genre that is very well-written and hard not to engage with. The subtitle is “A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession” and it concerns one Stéphane Breitwieser, a man from Alsace who, together with his girlfriend, Anne-Catherine Kleinklaus, managed to steal hundreds of artworks from museums and galleries across Europe between 1994 and his eventual arrest in 2001.

He has been in and out of prison in different countries since then, apparently completely unable to subdue his peculiar form of highly cultured kleptomania.

The book is based on many hours of interviews with Breitwieser, who never had any intention of selling any of his illegally acquired hoard. He just kept everything in an attic above his mother’s house, meanwhile turning himself into a well-educated connoisseur.

Much of the narrative consists of quite detailed accounts of the thefts themselves, many of which appear to have been extraordinarily easy to pull off due to lax security and being committed by a pair of thieves who were able to keep very cool and who did not look remotely like common criminals. The book then switches gear towards the end after they finally get caught and have to face justice.

Kleinkaus did not co-operate with Michael Finkel and, while he was able to interview her lawyer at length, we do not get her perspective here, and I think may be she comes out of it rather less favourably than might otherwise have been the case.

In all other respects this is a really interesting book. Thought-provoking and thoroughly-researched, it reads like a novel in some respects. I enjoyed reading this one a lot.