“They are natural thieves, attuned to risk, uncommonly calm. Some of their achievement though is due to an uncomfortable truth: many regional museums rely for security to a shocking degree on public trust. Protecting a museum can feel paradoxical because its mission isn’t to conceal valuables but to share in a way that makes you feel as close to a piece as possible, unencumbered by any security apparatus. Permanently ending nearly all museum crime would be easy: lock the works in vaults and hire armed guards. Of course, this would also mean the end of museums; they would now be called banks”

One of the most engaging non-fiction narratives I encountered this year. This was a hard one to pause once I got started as it did an incredible job of portraying recent under-the-radar intruding history.

Between this book and Jessica Knoll’s “Bright Young Women” I am entirely convinced that there is no such thing as a real-life criminal mastermind. The pair of Breitweiser and Anne-Catherine get away with their stealing spree not because of any genius level of sophistication but because they rely on the unspoken trust most of us have that people won’t behave the way that they do. Their years of success were also made possible because of an art dealing industry that Finley points out is intensely and intentionally shady by design.