#86 in Biography & memoir
The Art Thief
- 213
- Pages
- about 4 h
- Reading time
- NYT bestseller · 9 weeks on the list, peaked at #5
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Our view
“The Art Thief” is true crime with a novelist’s pace: the story of Stéphane Breitwieser, who robbed museums across Europe for nearly a decade. Finkel’s account is well researched and compact, a little over two hundred pages that some readers say read like fiction. With a girlfriend keeping watch and more than three hundred objects taken, it is a study of obsession as much as a heist story.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
The true story of the world’s most prolific art thief, who accumulated a collection worth over $1.4 billion. A spellbinding portrait of obsession and flawed genius, from the bestselling author of The Stranger in the Wood. For centuries, works of art have been stolen in countless ways from all over the world, but no one has been quite as successful at it as the master thief Stéphane Breitwieser. Carrying out more than 200 heists over nearly ten years - in museums and cathedrals all over Europe - Breitwieser, along with his girlfriend who worked as his lookout, stole more than 300 objects, until it all fell apart in spectacular fashion. In The Art Thief, Michael Finkel brings us into Breitwieser’s strange and fascinating world. Unlike most thieves, he never stole for money, keeping all his treasures in his home, where he could admire them to his heart’s content. Possessed of a remarkable appreciation for art and an innate ability to assess practically any security system, Breitwieser managed to pull off a breathtakingly number of audacious thefts. Yet these strange talents bred a growing disregard for risk and an addict’s need to score, leading Breitwieser to ignore his girlfriend’s pleas to stop - until one final act of hubris brought everything crashing down. This is a riveting story of art, crime, and an insatiable hunger to possess beauty at any cost.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.8 across 182 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 55% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Biography & memoir average of 8.1. That is how 8.0 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hardcover | 7.8 | 182 | 100% |
Frequently asked
How long is The Art Thief?
It has 213 pages — shorter than 83% of the ranked books in Biography & memoir.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Biography & memoir — with scores between 7.6 and 8.3, closest to this book.
