The Art Thief [Paperback]

Noah Charney (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416563008
• ISBN-13: 978-1416563006
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (79 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Noah Charney holds advanced degrees in art history from The Courtauld Institute and Cambridge University. He is the founding director of ARCA, the Association for Research into Crimes against Art, a non-profit think tank and consultancy group on issues in art crime (www.artcrime.info). His work in the field of art crime has been praised in such forums as The New York Times Magazine, Time Magazine, Vanity Fair, BBC Radio, and National Public Radio, among others. Charney is the author of numerous articles, works of non-fiction, and an internationally best-selling novel, "The Art Thief" (Atria 2007), currently translated into sixteen languages. He is the editor of "Art & Crime: Exploring the Dark Side of the Art World" (Praeger 2009), and the author of a series of art history guides to Spanish museums entitled "Museum Time," published in Spanish and English (Planeta 2010). He published "Stealing the Mystic Lamb: The True History of the World's Most Frequently Stolen Masterpiece" with PublicAffairs in 2010. This critically-acclaimed work of non-fiction is an international best-seller. His latest book is "The Thefts of the Mona Lisa: On Stealing the World's Most Famous Painting," all profits from which support charity. He lives in Italy, and is currently Adjunct Professor of Art History at the American University of Rome.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars how not to write a book, November 4, 2007

By 

RobA - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Art Thief: A Novel (Hardcover)

The Art Thief is an amateurish novel that lectures against romanticizing art theft while doing exactly that. The author is described in publicity material as the founding director of an international think tank on art crime with a board of trustees that "includes the respective art squad heads of the FBI, Carabinieri, and Scotland Yard, as well as renowned museum, art world, and criminology specialists." They may not have read his novel. The book is populated with slapstick national stereotypes and Keystone Cops. The bumbling hugely obese French detective of the Sûreté stops to indulge his gourmandise on the way to crime scenes and is almost too fat to see the clues. The depressed, poorly dressed working-class British art crimes detective "can't tell a Degas from a Manet from a fancy I-don't-know-what" but has solved all his cases. Despite the lectures the author provides on how art theft is funding the drug trade and terrorism, the thieves are motivated by love, loss, and a sense of fairness and are the only characters not mocked or stereotyped. The moral of the story: "Trust in thieves."

Charney thanks his editors in the acknowledgements but apparently no one actually edited the writing. He writes about spotlights that illuminate spaces "vicariously," people who "reflect thoughtlessly," academic halls decorated with "pendulous portraits" (shades of Dalí). The only possible conclusion is that he does not know whas those adjectives and adverbs mean. An attentive editor should have noticed these and other awkward uses of language. There should be no star at all attached to this disastrous title.

27 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A disappointment, November 10, 2007

By 

B. Johnson - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Art Thief: A Novel (Hardcover)

I was intrigued enough by the subject matter of this book to give it a chance, but found it tremendously disappointing. The writing is painfully bad at times, and would have benefitted greatly from an editor. The characters are cliched, and the ending contrived. How this book ever landed a major publishing contract I cannot imagine. I have seen self-published fan fiction with better writing than this. I was also amused by Mr. Charney's claim to have invented the study of art crime; there are at least two professional journals and numerous books devoted to the subject written before Mr. Charney was born. For those interested in art history and art world intrigue, I would recommend Thomas Hoving's King of the Confessors and Peter Mayle's Chasing Cezanne.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A Poor Example of Storytelling, February 29, 2008

By 

Thriller Lover (Las Vegas, Nevada) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Art Thief: A Novel (Hardcover)

I wanted to enjoy THE ART THIEF, mainly due to my pre-existing interest in the subject matter. However, author Charney is simply not very skilled at telling a story that is even remotely interesting or believable. The plot of this book is not structured in a manner to engage the reader's interest. The character development is non-existent, and the prose awkward. In particular, Charney's efforts at "humorous" dialogue fall painfully flat.

THE ART THIEF contains some interesting lectures on art history, but they are not integrated into the novel's plot. I learned some interesting tidbits of information in reading this novel, but it didn't make the book worthwhile for me. I would have been better off reading a work of non-fiction.

Charney is probably a very talented guy, but I think his editor let him down by releasing THE ART THIEF in its current form. Novels like this make me wonder about the mindset of modern-day publishing.