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From the Library Blog

Local History Book Group: ‘The Gardner Heist’ by Ulrich Boser

April 01, 2019 | Will Adamczyk

Join me on Wednesday, April 24th  at 7:00 for a discussion of ‘The Unredeemed Captive‘ by John Demos.

The Local History Book Group meets quarterly at the Library. Copies of the book will be available at the Main Desk on the first floor.

Haven’t you always wanted to know who stole the Gardner paintings???

Well, if you join our discussion, you may not get the answer, but maybe you’ll learn a little more about the heist and the characters surrounding the mystery.

“Shortly after midnight on March 18, 1990, two men broke into the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston and committed the largest art heist in history. They stole a dozen masterpieces, including one Vermeer, three Rembrandts, and five Degas. But after thousands of leads—and a $5 million reward—none of the paintings have been recovered. Worth as much as $500 million, the missing masterpieces have become one of the nation’s most extraordinary unsolved mysteries.

After the death of famed art detective Harold Smith, reporter Ulrich Boser decided to take up the case. Exploring Smith’s unfinished leads, Boser travels deep into the art underworld and comes across a remarkable cast of characters, including a brilliant rock ‘n’ roll thief, a gangster who professes his innocence in rhyming verse, and the enigmatic late Boston heiress Isabella Stewart Gardner herself. Boser becomes increasingly obsessed with the case and eventually uncovers startling new evidence about the identities of the thieves. A tale of art and greed, of obsession and loss, The Gardner Heist is as compelling as the stolen masterpieces themselves.”

To see previous Local History Book Club titles and lists from our other groups, visit our Book Group page.

Will Adamczyk, Library Director


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