The Good Thief's Blog

Trip to Paris and Art Theft

This past weekend I was invited to Paris as the guest of the Lowdham Book Festival On Tour. Lowdham is a small village just outside Nottingham with a thriving local bookshop, The Bookcase, and an annual literary festival. It was at the Lowdham Book Festival some years ago that I was invited to take part in my first author panel (alongside Allan Guthrie and Nicola Monaghan), and since then I've returned for a panel event with Anne Zouroudi, as well as meeting up with a group from Lowdham in Amsterdam a few years ago.

This time, I organised a walking tour, which was something new for me, but a really rewarding experience. I'd planned everything by map, and when I reached Paris on Saturday evening, I decided I'd better walk the route to check my timings. Cue a heavy rain storm and an opportunity to go over my notes. An hour later, I stepped out into some lighter rain and soon discovered I was going to have to ditch my original starting point - the beautiful Places des Vosges in the Marais. It's here that the action in The Good Thief's Guide to Paris begins with Charlie breaking into a fictional apartment building I'd handily dropped into the space between a real two star hotel and a green grocer's on Rue de Birague. But unfortunately, the walk through the Marais to the next location was going to take too long. So I re-worked my notes, ready for everything to begin at the Pompidou Centre.

The following morning, the group assembled in the square opposite the Pompidou and I began to explain how we could all nip inside and steal a Picasso. I had a fool-proof plan, after all, as set out in my book. But just in case anyone didn't believe me, I had some stats and some reassuring stories about art thefts to back me up.

For starters, I mentioned that back in 2007, Interpol estimated that between $4 billion and $6 billion worth of stolen art changes hands in a year. Or that in economic terms, at least, art theft is the third biggest crime on an international basis, behind only the drug and illegal arms trades. And that Picasso is by far the most stolen artist in the world - with more than 500 missing Picassos listed on the London-Based Art Loss Register.

Then I talked about some famous art thefts, and explained how surprisingly simple it can be to steal a work of art from a gallery. Why is it so simple? A couple of reasons, really. One, because the nature of a gallery means that the public have to be allowed to get up very close to the works on display. And two, because galleries don't have enough cash left over after acquiring art and fitting out galleries to install and maintain truly sophisticated security systems.

Take, for example, the theft of Munch's The Scream from the National Gallery is Oslo, which Edward Dolnick writes about in his brilliant true crime title, STEALING THE SCREA
M. In this case, two men simply braced a ladder against a wall and one of them climbed up and smashed a second-floor window. The window wasn't reinforced in any way and it wasn't alarmed. The Scream was hanging right next to the window. It wasn't alarmed, either. It was secured by a simple wire. The guy at the top of the ladder reached inside, snipped the wire, and dropped the painting down the ladder to his accomplice. Then they made their escape in a stolen car, after leaving behind a postcard with a message on it that read: "Thanks for the poor security". The theft was only discovered when a gust of window through the broken window caused a curtain to trigger a motion sensor, and by then it was much too late.

And just in case anyone on the tour wasn't convinced that similar thefts could have occurred in Paris, I talked about three thefts that happened in Pairs in 2007, 2009 and 2010. In 2007, thieves broke into the home of Picasso's grand-daughter and made off with Picasso paintings valued at $66 million. In 2009, a Picasso sketch book worth an estimated $6.9 million was stolen from an unlocked glass display case in the Picasso Museum. And in 2010, a number of paintings (including a Picasso) and valued at $120 million were stolen from a robbery from the Museum of Modern Art. In this case, the thieves cut a padlock and broke through a window to carry out the theft. Oh, and the museum's alarm system had been broken for 2 months prior to the theft taking place...

Anyhow, once I'd got everyone ready to go in and rip The Guitar Player from the wall of the fourth floor gallery in the Pompidou's modern art museum, we headed on via the crooked alleyway of Rue Quincampoix (where Charlie Howard tracks down a painting that's central to the plot of TGTGT Paris) to the Palais Royal. The courtyard gardens at the Palais Royal are one of my favourite spots in the city, and we spent time sitting among the flowers and the lime trees and the fountains, as I talked a bit about how I research and prepare to write a Good Thief's Guide.

After that, we walked via the Louvre (where I mentioned the World's most famous art theft - of the Mona Lisa in 1911), before crossing the River Seine and walking along the Left Bank to the fascinating Shakespeare & Co book shop. Shakespeare & Co is the book shop that I based the Paris Lights store on in my book, and so it was fitting that I finished my talk here, ready for the group to receive a quick presentation about the shop itself.

So now I'm home, and I'm shattered, but it was well worth the trip. And who knows, maybe next year we'll tackle Venice...  

 

 

Books on the Isle of Man

Every month or so, I head up to the Manx Radio studios on Douglas Head (overlooking Douglas Bay, right) together with local author and publisher Linda Mann, to talk books with Bob Harrison, host of the Evening Extra show. We chat for half an hour or so about what we're up to. We talk about the books we've been reading. And we discuss the bestselling books on the Isle of Man.

The bestsellers list is something Linda compiles with the help of a number of local book shops, and I always find it interesting. You'll often find the same books and authors appearing that crop up on the bestseller lists in the UK. You'll also find a number of book club choices. But as well as those, there's a thriving local publishing scene, and the top books often reflect that. Take this month's top 5:

1. A Brief History of the Isle of Man - Sara Goodwins

2. Pitkins PA - Ann Axe (This is a memoir written by the personal assistant of the late Sir Norman Wisdom, a long-time resident of the Isle of Man)

3. Started Early, Took My Dog - Kate Atkinson

4. Caught - Harlan Coben

5. The Houses and Gardens of Baillie Scott - Ian MacDonald Smith 

Two local books from small publishers top the list. And this time round, 8 of the top 20 bestselling titles are local interest books about the Isle of Man.  So it's an interesting mix, and it's good to see book buyers supporting Manx publishers in this way. I'm sure regional publishers put out good and topical content in most places throughout the UK, but the scene does seem particularly vibrant on the Isle of Man. Go into a local book shop and you'll find books on Manx cookery, Manx history, Manx geography, Manx culture, Manx fairytales, the famous TT races and much more besides. (And now that I think of it, maybe I'll post something here soon about some of the local legends and fairytales that swirl around the island, because some of them are pretty weird...)

As for the books I've been reading, I talked about a couple I've really enjoyed. The first is Christopher Isherwood's Goodbye to Berlin, a fascinating memoir of 1930s Berlin, which inspired the movie Cabaret. And the other is Philip Kerr's Berlin Noir, a collection of Kerr's first three Bernie Gunther novels (March Violets, The Pale Criminal and A German Requiem). I'm part way through the final novel in the collection, but I'm pacing myself, because I've been enjoying the books so much. I don't read a lot of historical crime, but I really admire the way Kerr has thrown Gunther into the world of 1930s and 40s Berlin, and the clever use the books make of historical figures from the pre and post war era. But most of all I love Kerr's Chandleresque narration, and the gritty, noirish depiction of a Berlin where sometimes good deeds have to be done for bad people, and where Gunther's struggle to make a living as a jobbing private eye is harder than it has any right to be.   

Back from Berlin

I've been back from Berlin for just over a week now, and I'm well into writing the next Good Thief's Guide. This was my second trip to Berlin for the book, and it was incredibly useful. In the main, I tried to focus on getting more of a 'feel' for the city this time round, in particular the different neighbourhoods I'm going to be writing about. I spent time in the former eastern districts of Prenzlauer Berg (where Charlie is going to live), Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain, the historical Mitte area, and the Tiergarten, in the former west.

I found Charlie's apartment. And a couple of locations Charlie is going to break into.

And what else? I went and took a good look at the British Embassy. I went up the Fernsehturm (the Death Star-like TV tower). I hunted out some outdoor ping-pong tables in Kollwitz Platz. I visited the DDR Museum. Experienced a train driver strike. Wandered through the Ka De Wa department store. Ate a HUGE apple tart. Walked through the soviet-era architecture of Karl Marx Allee. Strolled along by the River Spree, which was filled with heavy chunks of ice (the temp varied between minus 4 and minus 6 while we were there). Took a bus tour (hey, it was cold). And drank another Berliner Weisse.

I didn't try Curry Wurst (maybe next time) and I'm sure there's plenty more I missed.

Mind you, that's what trip 3 is for. And since I'm planning to return in the summer, I'm hoping it'll be a whole lot warmer.