The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession

I confess: I am mostly untroubled by art crimes, whether thefts or forgeries. I even find them a little charming, mostly victimless, and a kind of art in themselves. And that's surely how Stéphane Breitwieser, a Frenchman who, with his girlfriend Anne-Catherine Kleinklaus, pulled off an incredible series of thefts—over 200 in the eight years before he was first caught in 2001—at small museums across Europe, would like to be thought of: as an artist, or rather as a collector of exquisite taste and skill, who stole not for profit but for love. Finkel's account of Breitwieser's crimes is equally skillful, a deliciously detailed account of both his thefts and his pathological drive to continue them beyond any point of reason. He sweeps you up in Breitwieser's audacious capers without ever quite romanticizing him or forgetting the costs of his compulsion.