The Rescue Artist: A True Story of Art, Thieves, and the Hunt for a Missing Masterpiece

Edgar Award Winner for Best Fact Crime. "An entertaining account of the eternal struggle between high art and low cunning." — Time

In the predawn hours of a gloomy February day in 1994, two thieves entered the National Gallery in Oslo and made off with one of the world's most famous paintings, Edvard Munch's Scream . It was a brazen crime committed while the whole world was watching the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer. Baffled and humiliated, the Norwegian police turned to the one man they believed could help: a half English, half American undercover cop named Charley Hill, the world's greatest art detective.

The Rescue Artist is a rollicking narrative that carries readers deep inside the art underworld—and introduces them to a large and colorful cast of titled aristocrats, intrepid investigators, and thick-necked thugs. But most compelling of all is Charley Hill himself, a complicated mix of brilliance, foolhardiness, and charm whose hunt for a purloined treasure would either cap an illustrious career or be the fiasco that would haunt him forever.

"There has never been a better book on art crime." — ARTnews

"Riveting . . . fascinating." — Los Angeles Times

"A masterpiece. Engrossing, entertaining, often surreally hilarious." —Mary Roach, New York Times –bestselling author

"A fascinating tale, expertly told, with characters as crisply drawn as any Rembrandt, and the sort of intrigue generally found only in a thriller." —Arthur Golden, national bestselling author of Memoirs of a Geisha