The Irish Game: True Story of Crime and Art FROM THE PUBLISHER
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 seedy, rotund, and brazen Dublin gangster named Martin Cahill. Yet the great plunder -- including a Gainsborough, a Goya, two works by Rubens, and Vermeer's Lady Writing a Letter with Her Maid -- remained maddeningly at large for years. Cahill taunted the police with a string of other crimes, but in the end the paintings 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 a 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 two hundred million dollars -- led to a remarkable discovery about the way Vermeer achieved his photographic perspective.
The Irish Game places the great theft in the context of Ireland's troubled history and follows the thread that led, as a direct result of Cahill's desperate adventures with the Russ-borough art, to his assassination by the IRA. With the storytelling skill of a novelist and the nose 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.
SYNOPSIS
In August 2003, two men snatched a painting by Leonardo da Vinci, Madonna with the Yarnwinder, during a tour of the Scottish castle where it hung. London-based writer and journalist Hart recounts the crime and the response of law enforcement agencies. The whole affair reveals how nearly priceless art is not sold on the black market but used as collateral, solved the related case of a Vermeer stolen twice, and destroyed the legendary criminal Martin Cahill. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
FROM THE CRITICS
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. Agent, Michael Carlisle. National author tour. (May 14) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
Central to Hart's story is the hapless Protestant Ascendancy mansion at Russborough, Ireland, and a painting by Vermeer. Filled with fine art by its owners, since donated to the Irish National Gallery, the collection was robbed repeatedly, once by the heiress to the fortune and most famously by Irish gangster Martin Cahill. Journalist Hart (Diamond: A Journal to the Heart of an Obsession) has woven together a little gem of a story that includes a breakthrough in understanding the Vermeer, attributable to its being robbed. Cahill created a new category of art thief; in addition to those stealing for private collectors and for ransom, he added those using classic paintings as collateral among thieves. Scotland Yard is portrayed in the early 1990s at its peak in cracking art thefts. And then there's the IRA . Though the narrative bogs down occasionally, ultimately it all pulls together. Strongly recommended for art history and criminal justice collections and for anyone who loves a good crime yarn. Robert Moore, Bristol-Myers Squibb Medical Imaging, North Billerica, MA Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
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