The Rescue Artist: A True Story of Art, Thieves, and the Hunt for a Missing Masterpiece―An Edgar Award Winner

edward dolnick

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 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.

Genres nonfictionarttrue crimehistorycrimemysteryart historyaudiobookbiographybook club

270 pages, Paperback

First published June 28,2005

Literary awards

edgar award,

This edition

Format: 270 pages, Paperback
Published: June 27, 2006 by Harper Perennial
ISBN: 9780060531188
ASIN: 0060531185
Language: English

About the author

edward dolnick

Edward Dolnick is an American writer, formerly a science writer at the Boston Globe. He has been published in the Atlantic Monthly, the New York Times Magazine, and the Washington Post, among other publications. His books include Madness on the Couch : Blaming the Victim in the Heyday of Psychoanalysis (1998) and Down the Great Unknown : John Wesley Powell's 1869 Journey of Discovery and Tragedy Through the Grand Canyon (2001).