The back cover of THE ART THIEF announces that its subject, Stéphane Breitwieser, “is the most prolific art thief of all time.” He stole almost $2 billion worth of art from regional museums in Western Europe, but --- happily --- the story inside makes those boasts seem less compelling than the how and why of this “gentleman” art thief’s obsession.

"THE ART THIEF is both comprehensive and completely absorbing. It will have you wondering, as judges and juries did, if the defendant is a career criminal or simply an aesthete."

Based on hours of interviews with the thief himself, along with detectives, therapists, museum directors and others, journalist Michael Finkel has recreated Breitwieser’s 10-year stealing spree, relating the extraordinary stories behind his many “acquisitions.” As one therapist said of him, “Art has taken the place of society for him.”

If a passerby in Baden-Baden or Brussels saw them in the 1990s, Breitwieser and his girlfriend and accomplice, Anne-Catherine Kleinklaus, looked like a happy young couple enjoying a date at a museum, which, in a sense, they were. But once inside, Breitwieser, an "art collector with an unorthodox acquisition style,” quickly purloined masterpieces --- among them, Cranach, Brueghel and Watteau --- from sparsely protected regional museums and spirited them to his attic, where he and his girlfriend would admire them on their walls or shelves. Meanwhile, each day Anne-Catherine would go to her nursing job, while Breitwieser occasionally worked as a waiter --- until their next foray into a museum or church.

Though Breitwieser published his own version of events in 2006, this slender book strives to give the reader a broader perspective. It brings together the outrageous crimes, as well as the motivation behind them, coupled with the likely disposition of the stolen goods (which disappeared from the attic following his arrest).

THE ART THIEF is both comprehensive and completely absorbing. It will have you wondering, as judges and juries did, if the defendant is a career criminal or simply an aesthete.