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    The Irish Game: A True Story of Crime and Art
    Unavailable
    The Irish Game: A True Story of Crime and Art
    Unavailable
    The Irish Game: A True Story of Crime and Art
    Ebook248 pages4 hours

    The Irish Game: A True Story of Crime and Art

    By Matthew Hart

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    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 Dublin gangster named Martin Cahill. Yet the great plunder -including a Gainsborough, a Goya, two Rubenses, and a Vermeer- remained at large for years. Cahill taunted the police with a string of other crimes, but in the end it was the paintings that 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 an astonishing 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 $200 million-led to a remarkable discovery about the way Vermeer achieved his photographic perspective.

    The Irish Game places the great theft in Ireland's long sad history of violence and follows the thread that led, as a direct result of Cahill's desperate adventures with the Russborough art, to his assassination by the IRA. With the storytelling skill of a novelist and the instincts 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.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury Publishing
    Release dateMay 26, 2009
    ISBN9780802718143
    Unavailable
    The Irish Game: A True Story of Crime and Art
    Author

    Matthew Hart

    Matthew Hart is a veteran writer and journalist, and author of seven books, including the award-winning Diamond. His work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Granta, the London Times, and The Financial Post Magazine. He was a contributing editor of the New York trade magazine Rapaport Diamond Report, and has appeared on 60 Minutes, CNN, and the National Geographic Channel. He lives in New York City.

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    Reviews for The Irish Game

    3.5/5

    41 ratings7 reviews

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    • 3/5
      This was a good book about Irish art theft. It was scattered in some areas. Sometimes couldn't follow the switching around of the characters. All in all good book
    • 4/5
      Interesting book about a subject I've never really thought of before. Has me seeking out other sources for tales about art thefts. Always a sign of a good book when it inspires you to further reading.
    • 3/5
      Art theft, the Irish criminal underworld, the Protestant-Catholic Irish conflict, the Irish Garda, international law enforcement, the life of Isabella Stewart Gardner, and Vermeer's painting techniques are all addressed in this short true crime story. The author presents interesting facts about each topic, but they fail to mesh into a smooth narrative. The book lacks focus.As the title of the book implies, the author attempts to tie the disparate stories together through Ireland, and in particular, through the country estate of Russborough, robbed of some its art treasures four times in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. However, only one of the four Russborough robberies is treated in any depth in the book -- the second, by Irish criminal Martin Cahill who included in his haul an almost priceless Vermeer. The author spends quite a bit of time describing the 1990 theft of several paintings from Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (which also included a valuable Vermeer) and the theft of Munch's The Scream from a Norwegian gallery (recovered by the same team that had earlier recovered the paintings from Cahill's Russborough robbery).A couple of times, Hart refers to the philosophy that led Great Britain's Scotland Yard to cooperate with the Irish Garda as well as law enforcement agencies in several other countries: "all art crime [is] international crime." Hart would have done well to follow this philosophy in structuring his book, rather than attempting to tie everything together geographically in Ireland.
    • 3/5
      The writing never reached the compelling stage. The real-life characters and the events seemed compelling, but the storytelling was lacking for me.
    • 4/5
      This true-crime art heist tale, published in 2004, has as many unlikely twists, betrayals, and double agents as a compelling mystery novel.In 1974, a British heiress sympathetic to the IRA, together with three men, stole 19 paintings, including Vermeer's LADY WRITING A LETTER WITH HER MAID, from Russborough, a castle and the dwelling place of the English aristocrats Sir Alfred and Lady Beit in Ireland. The paintings were recovered; but in 1986, the Vermeer and other paintings were stolen again by a bold Dublin gangster named Martin Cahill. Set against Irish tensions of the late 1900s that reflected the chasms between the classes and between Ireland and England, this story illuminates the darker side of art--including the connections to drug and mob money and to violence.My fascination with the stories and historical tidbits that surround high-end art began when I worked at Christie's Auction House in NYC in the 1990s. Much of what I learned there about the art world became good fodder for the novel that would eventually become A TRACE OF DECEIT. I first read this book (THE IRISH GAME) as I was drafting TRACE, years ago, because it tells more than the story of the solved art heists. It also tells the story of how a man restoring the painting carefully removed the top layer of paint (which was added after Vermeer died) to reveal a red wax seal on the letter, which adds to the emotional depth of the painting; and how a conservator discovered the technique Vermeer used to achieve perspective in his painting. Amazing.I reread this book again recently because as I develop my new protagonist, Inspector Michael Corravan, born in Ireland and raised in an Irish section of Whitechapel, I'm obsessing about Ireland--its history, the prejudices against the Irish in England in the 1800s, and the complex web of police and criminals that reached from one island to the other across the Irish Sea.I recommend this book for anyone interested in art, Ireland, and true crime.
    • 4/5
      Who knew it was so easy to steal art?

      Only one thing kept me from giving this 5 stars, was there was a part near the end that made absolutely no sense to me..... The part about Isabella Stewart Gardner & her museum.....

      So there is this estate in Ireland: Russborough, at the time of the theft it was owned by Sir Alfred & Lady Beit (from England).... and in that estate is billions of dollars worth of art & paintings which have been stolen & recovered not once, but twice.

      This book is about those stolen paintings, the thief, & the art recovery team. It also talks about how stolen art is used for collateral to purchase drugs & munitions, and is recycled to be used for collateral again. One of the ways to ascertain value is unwittingly done for the criminals by the police & newspapers. When a major piece of art is stolen, the police will assess the value, and the newspapers will usually place a photograph of the work, history and value of the piece, thus giving providence of the piece of art.

      I found this book to be very interesting and well written. It wasn't too long or involved and it held my interest. Originally I picked it for the relay tag: Ireland, but it fell short by 30 pages..... but because it was interesting I set it aside to read later.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed the book, but not as much as several others I have read re infamous art thefts. It is a bit disjointed as it tries to tie together different actual events. Art theft is an interesting topic, with so many twists and turns; however, this book did not bring in the suspense factor found in other books on the topic.