The Irish Game: A True Story of Crime and Art [Hardcover]

Matthew Hart (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2004

In the annals of art theft, no case has matched—for sheer criminal panache—the heist at Ireland’s Russborough House in 1986.

The Irish police knew right away that the mastermind was a Dublin gangster named Martin Cahill. Yet the great plunder —including a Gainsborough, a Goya, two Rubenses, and a Vermeer— remained at large for years. Cahill taunted the police with a string of other crimes, but in the end it was the paintings that brought him low. The challenge of disposing of such famous works forced him to reach outside his familiar world into the international arena, and when he did, his pursuers were waiting.

The movie-perfect sting that broke Cahill uncovered an astonishing maze of banking and drug-dealing connections that redefined the way police view art theft. As if that were not enough, the recovery of the Vermeer—by then worth $200 million—led to a remarkable discovery about the way Vermeer achieved his photographic perspective.

The Irish Game places the great theft in Ireland’s long sad history of violence and follows the thread that led, as a direct result of Cahill’s desperate adventures with the Russborough art, to his assassination by the IRA. With the storytelling skill of a novelist and the instincts of a detective, Matthew Hart follows the twists and turns of this celebrated case, linking it with two other world-famous thefts—of Vermeer’s “The Concert” and other famous paintings at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, and of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” at the National Gallery of Norway in Oslo. Sharply observed, fully explored, The Irish Game is a masterpiece in the literature of true crime.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this engaging account of how stolen paintings have become collateral in the international drug trade, starting with the 1974 theft of a priceless Vermeer from an Irish estate, British author Hart (Diamond: A Journey to the Heart of an Obsession) offers a convincing revisionist view of the closest thing the book has to a protagonist, legendary Irish thug Martin Cahill (aka "The General"). The case that the "slovenly, loyal, suspicious, immovable" Cahill was no mastermind, however, tends to render the narrative more prosaic than dramatic, as does the argument that most heists, including the sensational 1990 robbery from Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and the 1994 theft of Edvard Munch's The Scream, involved more chutzpah and embarrassing security lapses than Topkapi-like planning. The author's primary strength lies in his character portraits-he describes one upper-class art thief as rooting around "in the issues of the day like someone picking through a bin for a hat that would fit." The dedicated Irish police who tracked these criminals and attempted numerous stings to recover the paintings deserve credit for their heroism, but they aren't particularly memorable. Still, Hart sheds light on a little-known area of modern crime that should be of interest to many general readers.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

British journalist Hart, author of Diamond: A Journey into the Heart of an Obsession (2001), continues his investigation into criminal covetousness in a set of brisk and fascinating accounts of international art heists, including the 1994 snatching of Edvard Munch's The Scream. He primarily focuses on two brazen assaults on Russborough, an isolated Irish estate with an improbably stupendous art collection, which included Vermeer's Lady Writing a Letter with Her Maid. The first occurred in 1974, orchestrated not by an archcriminal but by an inept, IRA-supporting British heiress. A dozen years later, a true outlaw, Martin Cahill, made off with the Russborough masterpieces and sent the authorities on a maddening quest. Hart vividly portrays colorful characters on both sides of the law, and vigorously chronicles complex investigations and two stunning discoveries pertaining to the so-called Irish Vermeer in a lively chronicle that arouses both wry admiration for the sheer gall of art thieves and outrage at the thought of irreplaceable art treasures in the hands of thugs, many seeking nothing more than collateral for drug deals. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Walker & Company; 1st edition (May 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802714269
• ISBN-13: 978-0802714268
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,295,719 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars High Stakes Cat-and-Mousing, October 14, 2004

By 

R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Irish Game: A True Story of Crime and Art (Hardcover)

There is a problem when you steal famous artworks: "Art is easy to steal, but hard to sell." So writes Matthew Hart in _The Irish Game: A True Story of Crime and Art_ (Walker). For the criminals described here, it is easy to steal the art: bind and gag the guards, rip up the alarms, and especially get in and out fast. When Hart describes one successful heist after another, it certainly seems like no particular challenge. But what does the crook do when he has that painting? It is then that the risks mount up; the mere possession of a Rembrandt might give very esthetic thieves satisfaction, but that's not what they are in the game for. There is little reality to the "Dr. No" perpetrator, named for the fantastically evil evildoer pitted against James Bond; there really aren't secretive billionaires ordering thefts for hire to get their particular favorite artwork to themselves. What is far more likely nowadays is that a fraction of the stolen item's value could be used for collateral in, say, a drug deal. Still, the thief needs to unload the artwork somehow, and this need provides the drama in the episodes of Hart's book, as international police forces work together to orchestrate elaborate sting operations.

In 1974, the Vermeer _Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid_ was stolen from the Beit collection at Russborough House near Dublin by a gang whose most curious and visible member was Rose Dugdale, a seductive, smart, spoiled rich kid who rebelling against whatever, was an Englishwoman supporting the IRA's campaign of terror. Twelve years later, it was stolen again by Dublin gangster Martin Cahill. Most of Hart's book has to do with the difficulties of finding the paintings again, the dangers and the dead ends as international police forces set spies on Cahill and his gang, and Cahill set his spies on them. Remarkably, after both these robberies, conservators that had to clean and repair the painting found new aspects of the canvas that changed scholarly opinions about them. The work of the restorers, and their discoveries, are described here in satisfying detail. Tangential to the main story are descriptions of the famous unsolved thefts from the Isabella Gardner Museum in Boston and the 1994 theft of Munch's _The Scream_ from the National Gallery of Norway.

Hart has given a fast-paced and captivating account of the symbiosis between cops and robbers. He has valuable remarks on the contemporary art world, art restoration, and the particular way the Irish play the game. He helps explain the peculiar relationship between Cahill's gang and the Garda by analyzing the history of the Irish resistance to authority. The recovered Vermeer was rehung at Russborough House, where yet another attempt was made on it. The Beit collection has since been taken in by Dublin's National Gallery, which is less isolated and more protected. Hart shows, however, that it is a reasonable conjecture that someone is looking at the Vermeer on the Gallery's walls and wondering just how difficult it might be to make off with it again, and how difficult to gain riches by finding a taker.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Read About Real Crime and Art, April 2, 2006

By 

Happy Chappy "An Avid Reader." (Elk Grove, California) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Irish Game: A True Story of Crime and Art (Hardcover)

Matthew Hart's The Irish Game : A True Story of Crime and Art is an excellent read about Ireland, art, art theft, and criminal investigation. This is a very intiguing non-fiction book about the theft of art by Johannes Vermeer in 1986 from a great house/museum known as Russborough in Ireland.

Not only is this book a pleasure to read, I walked away learning quite a bit about art techniques, and art theft. Whereas non-fiction, if not done right, can tend to drag, this real story moves along at a brisk pace due in large part to the story, compelling characters, and smooth pace.

I really enjoyed learning about the Irish police AKA the Garda and the techniques they employed to track the art theft's chief suspect Martin Cahill.

I would encourage anyone interested in any of the aforementioned matters, inlcuding but not limited too: art theft, criminal investigative techniques, art techniques, and Ireland, to give this excellent book a try.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Engaging Shaggy Dog Story, December 23, 2004

By 

Kevin Killian (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Irish Game: A True Story of Crime and Art (Hardcover)

Matthew Hart is a charming and engaging writer who can bring any subject to light, and yet THE IRISH GAME is all over the place. Its subtitle, "A True Story of Crime and Art," might as well have been "Nine or Ten True Stories of Crime and Art." You do the math--there are the two parallel sagas of the robberies at Russborough House, which apparently have nothingto do with each other and that's the point. Then there is the story of the world's love of Vermeer, and how he above all other painters is venerated today. Hart compounds the Vermeer story by showing how art restorers have come up with soome farfetched theories of how Vermeer painted, presenting them as newly-discovered facts rather than the wild speculations they are. We also get the robbery of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum here in the USA and the finally the team that made away with THE SCREAM in Norway.

Any one of these storylines could have made a good book. I particularly liked the beginning chapters, which showed the political education of a British heiress and how she found herself deeper and deeper into the ideological clutches of the IRA; her story is worthy of Joseph Conrad, and Hart does it justice, even though he is forced to conclude it after only one or two chapters. The personality of Martin Cahill, whom I remember from the awesome John Boorman film of THE GENERAL, gets some new shadings here too. I imagine Hart had to be discreet in some places, both to protect his sources and to protect himself, as well, from libel suits, and the book is a splendid example of how to insinuate certain things without every having to come out and say them out loud. I still didn't get the title, "The Irish Game," might as well have called it, "The Norwegian Game."