The Irish Game - Softcover

Hart, Matthew

3.69

688 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0701177616 ISBN 13: 9780701177614

Publisher: Chatto & Windus, 2004

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In the crowded annals of art theft, no case has matched - for sheer, criminal panache - the heist at Russborough House in Ireland in May 1986. The Garda knew right away that the mastermind was a seedy, rotund, and brazen Dublin gangster named Martin Cahill. Yet the great plunder - including a Gainsborough, a Goya, two Rubens, and Vermeer's 'Lady Writing a Letter with Her Maid' - remained maddeningly at large year after year. Cahill taunted the police with a string of other crimes, but in the end it was the paintings that brought him low. The challenge of disposing of such famous works forced him to reach outside his familiar world into the international arena, and when he did his pursuers were waiting. The movie-perfect sting that broke Cahill uncovered an astonishing maze of banking and drug-dealing connections that re-defined the way police view art theft. As if that were not enough, the recovery of the Vermeer - by itself then worth $200 million - led to a remarkable discovery about the way Vermeer achieved his photographic perspective, forever enriching the way we see his art. With the storytelling skill of a novelist and the nose of a detective, Matthew Hart follows the twist

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Review:

"Absorbing and fast-moving" (Christopher Hirst Independent)

"The reader is gripped from the start by the fun of the chase... This book is a fabulous read" (Irish Independent)

"Hart writes, as it were, from the heart - he cares so intimately, knows so much and selects so impeccably" (Sunday Times)

"A "good story", with cops and robbers, terrorists, nincompoops, useful historical background, lurid modern foreground and a style that reanimates the past... Fascinating" (Independent on Sunday)

"Matthew Hart conveys the glamour, adventure, ruthlessness and even murderous nature of the trade with a novelist's grasp of narrative... Excellent" (The Times)

From the Publisher:

'A highly readable account of the way criminal lowlife gets involved with great art...written in a sharp thrillerish style...a diverting mixture of mad daring and blind incompetence on both the right and wrong sides of the law' Daily Mail

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