The Irish Game: A True Story of Crime and Art

The Irish Game: A True Story of Crime and Art
by Matthew Hart

The Irish Game: A True Story of Crime and Art
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Book Summary Information

Author: Matthew Hart
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2004-05-01
ISBN: 0802714269
Number of pages: 224
Publisher: Walker & Company

Book Reviews of The Irish Game: A True Story of Crime and Art

Book Review: "Easy to steal, hard to sell"
Summary: 5 Stars

"The Irish Game" tells the true stories of two separate art robberies at the palatial Russborough House in Wicklow. Of several paintings stolen, The Dutch master Jan Vermeer's "Lady Writing a Letter with Her Maid" (called the Dublin Vermeer) is easily one the most valuable at several hundred million dollars. I'm not ordinarily predisposed to enjoying true-crime tales, but I found this intriguing and engaging. The world of art theft is a labyrinth of interconnected criminal factions and the trail of stolen art can easily traverse several countries. To accurately present the myriad details--not only of the heists, but also of the extraordinarily convoluted stings that would recover the stolen art--is a feat of painstaking research. To present this to the reader as a thrilling read as opposed to mere reportage is an even bigger challenge. I think that Hart did a splendid job in both.

Whether there was too much background or not enough of the characters' lives, the heists, and the coterie of detectives, depends greatly on one's preference. In a story such as this, I consider it vital to be given a surplus of details rather than a mere spattering. The art theft world is not as straightforward as most people would assume, that is steal the art then sell it. Most of the stolen art, we are informed, are not fenced but used as collateral for other crimes, usually drug dealing and arms procurement. To catch these criminals and recover the lost art goes beyond conventional detection, to say the least, and Hart does a fine job in elevating the narrative from a mere recitation of facts to a thrilling account of this complex game. As to be expected, there are maps, illustrations, color plates, photos, etc., that serve as visual aids to heighten interest.

Of particular interest to me was the segue into the discovery by an art conservationist of a Vermeer "secret." Anyone who's seen a Vermeer is amazed by the realism. The other thing that amazes is the perspective (the convergence of parallel lines into a vanishing point). To refresh my memory, I pulled out my copy of "Vermeer" by Arthur Wheelock, Jr., one of the National Gallery of Art's curators and the U.S.'s leading Vermeer scholar, and once again stared at each of the forty color plates. When I look at them, I get the sensation that I can almost `step into' the picture or that the scene depicted is immediately in front of me. It's both wondrous and chilling, and his mastery of perspective has baffled scholars for close to four hundred years. Several years ago, I saw a documentary featuring David Hockney of the "Secret Knowledge" infamy, illustrating his theory that the old masters had used optics such as the primitive versions of the camera obscura to help create their masterpieces. His theory was equated to heresy and fueled controversies and numerous critics, but I will admit that I found it logical and utterly believable. Shame on me. In Chap. 9, I was stunned by the spectacularly simple technique the innovative master must have used, and for some of us, it will evoke memories of the grade-school technique we were taught on how to draw a perfect circle (bet you want to know now, don't you?). I had forgotten that oftentimes, truth is simply...simple!

Two of the more astonishing facts the reader learns is that the Dublin Vermeer was stolen twice from the same place, first in 1974 by a gang headed by Rose Dugdale, an IRA supporter and the spoiled daughter of a millionaire, and second by a career criminal, Martin Cahill, twelve years later, and the other is that the two separate cases were solved by a father and his son, Ned Hogan and Liam Hogan. Both were officers in the Garda S?och?na (Ireland's police force) and Ned was one of the major players in the recovery in the 1970s. When the second heist occurred in 1986, Liam was instrumental in the recovery of the same Vermeer. As father and son look at the recovered Dutch Vermeer, Liam says to his father, "If they lose it again, they can get it back themselves." Ned's reply? "If we get it back again, we keep it."

Summary of The Irish Game: A True Story of Crime and Art

In the annals of art theft, no case has matched-for sheer criminal panache-the heist at Ireland's Russborough House in 1986.

The Irish police knew right away that the mastermind was a Dublin gangster named Martin Cahill. Yet the great plunder -including a Gainsborough, a Goya, two Rubenses, and a Vermeer- remained at large for years. 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 redefined the way police view art theft. As if that were not enough, the recovery of the Vermeer-by then worth $200 million-led to a remarkable discovery about the way Vermeer achieved his photographic perspective.

The Irish Game places the great theft in Ireland's long sad history of violence and follows the thread that led, as a direct result of Cahill's desperate adventures with the Russborough art, to his assassination by the IRA. With the storytelling skill of a novelist and the instincts of a detective, Matthew Hart follows the twists and turns of this celebrated case, linking it with two other world-famous thefts-of Vermeer's "The Concert" and other famous paintings at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, and of Edvard Munch's "The Scream" at the National Gallery of Norway in Oslo. Sharply observed, fully explored, The Irish Game is a masterpiece in the literature of true crime.

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