Art Crime

Once in a long while, a child is born possessing the rarest of gifts, the innate ability to feel impossible beauty, to recognize priceless works of art. When such a child is discovered, a 250-year-old secret organization called Our World trains them to acquire the greatest works of art through theft, bribery, forgery, and even murder. Once found, the masterpiece will disappear again without anyone ever knowing it surfaced and sold for billions of dollars of profit at a secret auction attended by only the wealthiest of the art world’s patrons.

If John Paul Davis wrote the phonebook, we’d all be reading it! Keith Houghton, #1 bestselling thriller author UK Top 40 (Boxset) UK Top 10 - Historical Thrillers US Top 5 - Crime Heist US Top 30 - Historical Thrillers From the International Bestselling Author of The Plantagenet Vendetta, The Templar Agenda, and The Larmenius Inheritance FROM THE BACK PAGE February 1649: As the dust settles following the English Civil War, only one objective remains before Oliver Cromwell's victory over the monarchy is complete. Since 1303, the Crown Jewels of England have been secure in the Tower of ...

From the author of The Find series comes PAINTER, the first book in the gripping new nordic noir series, The Stockholm Killings. In the frozen heart of a Stockholm winter, a new terror stalks the night. Families are being slaughtered, their bodies arranged in grotesque parodies of classical art—horrific masterpieces staged for Inspector Stefan Eklund to find. Haunted by his own past traumas, Eklund is thrust into leading a new elite unit, partnered with the sharp, ambitious Delara Holm and the unsettlingly brilliant forensic psychologist, Dr. Torre Nylander. Their only lead is a man found...

An exhilarating adventure set in the Netherlands, Croatia, Italy, Luxembourg, and Turkey about stolen art, the mafia, and a father’s vengeance. When researcher Zelda Richardson begins working at a local museum, she doesn’t expect to get entangled with an art theft, knocked unconscious by a forger, threatened by the mob, or stalked by drug dealers. To make matters worse, a Croatian gangster is convinced Zelda knows where a cache of recently pilfered paintings is. She must track down an international gang of art thieves and recover the stolen artwork in order to save those she loves most....

Near the end of World War Two, the commanding officer of a Nazi extermination unit makes an astounding art discovery. Then… disappears. Seventy-five years later, artwork by Leonardo da Vinci unexpectedly surfaces at a New York auction. When a street person disrupts the proceedings, Adam Barrow finds himself embroiled in a 500-year-old mystery. An ancient book holds the key, but its owner is murdered, and the book vanishes. Beautiful and bewildering Leslie Strickland emerges as an unexpected ally in Adam’s search for the book and the truth. Like him, she is the victim of an impoverished ...

Dangerous Rhythms tells the symbiotic story of jazz and the underworld: a relationship fostered in some of 20th century America’s most notorious vice districts. For the first half of the century mobsters and musicians enjoyed a mutually beneficial partnership. By offering artists like Louis Armstrong, Earl “Fatha” Hines, Fats Waller, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Lena Horne, and Ella Fitzgerald a stage, the mob, including major players Al Capone, Meyer Lansky, and Charlie “Lucky” Luciano, provided opportunities that would not otherwise have existed.

They killed the wrong man's family. Retired SWAT Captain Jeff Geronimo thought his days of violence were over. Living quietly in his best friend's backyard, he's content to drink coffee and watch the world go by—until he witnesses his elderly neighbor being beaten by drug dealers on his own street. What starts as a simple good deed spirals into a deadly game of cat and mouse when Jeff discovers the "harmless retiree" next door is actually a seasoned drug dealer who's stolen fifty thousand dollars from a Mexican cartel. Now the cartel wants their money back, and they don't care how many ...

To escape her newly aggressive lover, a young lawyer accepts an assignment in the Amazonian border town of Cruzeiro do Sul. There, she meets Carla, a local prosecutor, and Marcos, the son of an indigenous woman, and learns about the rampant attacks on the region's women, which have grown so commonplace that the cases quickly fill her large notebook. What she finds in the jungle is not only persistent racism, patriarchy, and deforestation, but a deep longing for answers to her enigmatic past.

Six years ago, the "Fabulous Gustave" slipped the grasp of Agent Fleur van Beekhof, making off with a priceless artwork . . . and Fleur's beautifully ordered life. Suddenly the cool, pragmatic Europol detective lost her detective partner and wife, her rising career, and her control, thanks to the addictive lure of cards. When a new Italian art theft bears all the markings of Gustave's taunting style, Fleur is put back in the field, because no one knows him better. She jumps at the chance to correct the mistake that ruined her life. The hitch? She has to work with her fiery ex-wife.

Five strangers entangled in the forger’s wicked web, each with a dangerous secret, and an apocalyptic flood threatening to reveal all. "A pulsating, breathless journey." --Historical Novel Society A wife on the run, a student searching for stolen art, a cleaner who has lined more than his pockets, a policeman whose career is almost over, and a guest who should never have received a wedding invite. In a race against time, and desperate to save themselves and all they hold dear, will their secrets prove more treacherous than the ominous floodwaters swallowing the historic city of Florence? ...

Coming out of retirement can be deadly… After tragedy struck three years earlier, art sleuth Carmen De Luca vowed to never work in the field again. But fifty is too young to fill her days with water aerobics and bingo, so when her former partner calls and begs for her help, Carmen gladly agrees. Yet after their first assignment – the recovery of a rare medieval prayer book from an eccentric collector living in rural France – goes horribly wrong, Carmen ends up in the crosshairs of both the local police and a murderer! With her target dead and the stolen book missing, she and her ...

Journey through the day in New York City that changed Andy Warhol forever. Ambushed with gunfire by an unstable writer, Andy Warhol is left with injuries, anxieties, and memories to last a lifetime. Review the details and investigate one of New York's most astounding true-crimes. What's Included: I. Story Recap: Narrative overview of the crime and details. II. People List: includes all names associated with the crime, not just the victims and perpetrators. Information about the participants includes their role to the crime and interesting factoids about the person. III. Location Addresses: ...

In the summer of 1998, Walter Kirn - then an aspiring novelist struggling with impending fatherhood and a dissolving marriage - set out on a peculiar, fateful errand: to personally deliver a crippled hunting dog from his home in Montana to the New York apartment of one Clark Rockefeller, a secretive young banker and art collector who had adopted the dog over the Internet. Thus began a 15-year relationship that drew Kirn deep into the fun-house world of an outlandish, eccentric son of privilege who ultimately would be unmasked as a brazen serial impostor, child kidnapper, and brutal murderer.

Gallery owner Ally Blake risks everything to exhibit at an art fair in Bogotá in the 1990s. She needs wealthy collectors to boost her gallery's sales and save her family from bankruptcy. When her art crates are tampered with and she discovers an ex-boyfriend and colleague from her State Department days in Santiago has involved her in a money laundering scheme, she devises a strategy to thwart the fraud, protect her children, and secure her family's future—but pulling it off will require her to make the art deal of a lifetime.

When a Dutch art dealer hides the stock from his gallery - rather than turn it over to his Nazi blackmailer - he pays with his life, leaving a treasure trove of modern masterpieces buried somewhere in Amsterdam, presumably lost forever. That is, until American art history student Zelda Richardson sticks her nose in.

The extraordinary life and crimes of heiress-turned-revolutionary, who in 1974 became the only woman to pull off a major art heist, The Woman Who Stole Vermeer is Rose Dugdale’s story, from her idyllic upbringing in Devonshire and her presentation to Elizabeth II as a debutante to her university years and her eventual radical lifestyle.

From the only American journalist ever to have been admitted to the insular Tokyo Metropolitan Police press club: a unique, firsthand, revelatory look at Japanese culture from the underbelly up.

Follow a journalist and TV producer from 48 Hours and 60 Minutes as she carves out a career in the ruthless, knives-out world of true crime television . . . one killer story at a time.

Edinburgh, 1849. Hordes of patients are dying all across the city, with doctors finding their remedies powerless. And a whispering campaign seeks to paint Dr. James Simpson, pioneer of medical chloroform, as a murderer. Determined to clear Simpson’s name, his protégé Will Raven and former housemaid Sarah Fisher must plunge into Edinburgh’s deadliest streets and find out who or what is behind the deaths. Soon they discover that the cause of the deaths has evaded detection purely because it is so unthinkable.

Jimmy Breslin: The Man Who Told the Truth is the first biography of the legendary writer, vividly portrayed by Richard Esposito, a former colleague of the Big Man. From Breslin's humble beginnings as a copy boy, to winning the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary, the writer's life was as fascinating as any of his subjects.