Master Thieves

January 15, 2015
A reporter investigates a notorious art heist.In 1990, two thieves made their way into Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and fled with 13 artworks, worth $500 million. Despite the FBI's ongoing investigation, the thieves were never caught, and the art remains missing. Pulitzer Prize-winning Boston Globe investigative reporter Kurkjian worked on the story when it first broke, and in his fast-paced, though sometimes repetitious, debut book, he recounts the heist, the official investigation and his own probing into the case. Security was lax at the museum, making it possible for two men, dressed in police uniforms, to gain entry, secure the guards with duct tape and invade the galleries. Shattering protective glass, they cut paintings from their frames and left without detection. The FBI took control immediately, refusing to involve the Massachusetts State Police or the Boston police, which the author sees as a crucial mistake. Mob involvement was suspected from the start, and local authorities, as one Boston policeman put it, "knew every wise guy in the city and had some reliable informants." As the case grew colder, the handful of FBI men assigned to it was reduced; three months after the heist, only one agent supervised. The author reveals the "Hollywood-style deal-making" used by the FBI to try to get mobsters to talk, but their efforts repeatedly failed. In 2013, after the Boston Marathon bombing, the head of the FBI's Boston office tried to get the public's help in identifying artwork they may have seen or tips on the perpetrators, but nothing emerged. Based on interviews with scores of mob bosses, gang members, their wives, girlfriends, family members and lawyers, as well as with policemen and other reporters, Kurkjian believes he knows who did it. He has shared his findings with the FBI, and they come as the climax to this engrossing real-life crime story.

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February 15, 2015

Author Kurkjian uses his talents as an investigative journalist (Boston Globe) to piece together the puzzle and offer his guess as to what happened in the greatest art heist in the history of the United States. In 1990, two men robbed the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum of 13 pieces of art, including a Rembrandt. To this day, the pieces have yet to be found and those responsible are unknown. Kurkjian has many threads to unravel in this mystery. Boston's mafia families are connected to the robbery, from low-level hoods to famed boss James "Whitey" Bulger. The paintings stolen were going to be a big pay day, or maybe they were taken as leverage to negotiate a release from prison. Kurkjian covers the many theories and at times gets repetitive and a little too detailed; however, the reader will know by the close of the book all of the dead ends that exist in the case. VERDICT This is a compelling read of an intriguing mystery. With mafia intrigue and a cast of characters, Kurkjian reveals who he believes was really involved and maybe where the paintings might still rest. Recommended for those who like reading about true crime, art history, and heists.--Ryan Claringbole, Coll. Lib. at the Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2015
In Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 13 empty frames mark the places of the paintings that were stolen in an infamous 1990 robbery. They included masterpieces by Degas, Rembrandt, and Vermeer worth, in total, $500 million, and they remain missing. Pulitzer Prizewinning investigative journalist Kurkjian, of the Boston Globe, pursues the story of the heist with the doggedness of a hard-bitten gumshoe. Declaring the theft Boston's last, best secret, he delves deeply into the scene of the crime, the beleaguered FBI investigation, and the 1980s war between two of Boston's major criminal gangs, the Salemme and Russo/Ferrara clans. Introducing a cast of colorful underworld characters, including the notorious Whitey Bulger, Kurkjian paints a picture of citywide corruption and decades of power struggle between opposing Mob bosses and their soldiers. Conducting new interviews with many of those allegedly involved in the case, the author advances compelling new theories about the robbery that will set true-crime enthusiasts and armchair detectives on the trail of these art treasures.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)