The Art Thief

Rome: In the small Baroque church of Santa Giuliana, a magnificent Caravaggio altarpiece disappears without a trace in the middle of the night. Paris: In the basement vault of the Malevich Society, curator Genevieve Delacloche is shocked to discover the disappearance of the Society's great treasure, "White-on-White" by Suprematist painter Kasimir Malevich. London: At the National Gallery of Modern Art, the museum's newest acquisition is stolen just hours after it was purchased for 6.3 million pounds. While three separate thefts are simultaneously investigated in three separate cities, the apparently unrelated crimes have more in common than anyone imagines. In each city, the authorities enlist the help of a renowned art investigator, police inspectors, and Scotland Yard. A trail of bizarre clues and intellectual puzzles reveals forgeries, over-paintings, thefts, and double-crosses leading ever deeper into a baffling conspiracy. Twenty-seven year-old American Noah Charney holds degrees in art history from the Courtauld Institute and Cambridge University, and he has created the academic field of the history of art theft. He is the founding director of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art (ARCA), the first international think tank on art crime whose board of trustees includes the respective art squad heads of the FBI, Carabinieri, and Scotland Yard, as well as renowned museum, art world, and criminology specialists.