The Rescue Artist

A True Story of Art, Thieves, and the Hunt for a Missing Masterpiece

By: Edward Dolnick

Narrated by: Sean Crisden

Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins

Publisher's summary

In the predawn hours of a gloomy February day in 1994, two thieves entered the National Gallery in Oslo and made off with one of the world's most famous paintings, Edvard Munch's Scream. It was a brazen crime committed while the whole world was watching the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer. Baffled and humiliated, the Norwegian police turned to the one man they believed could help: a half English, half American undercover cop named Charley Hill, the world's greatest art detective.

The Rescue Artist is a rollicking narrative that carries listeners deep inside the art underworld - and introduces them to a large and colorful cast of titled aristocrats, intrepid investigators, and thick-necked thugs. But most compelling of all is Charley Hill himself, a complicated mix of brilliance, foolhardiness, and charm whose hunt for a purloined treasure would either cap an illustrious career or be the fiasco that would haunt him forever.

©2005 Edward Dolnick (P)2018 HarperCollins Publishers

Fascinating, educational, and a great police story

Fast-paced action with historical and artistic references woven throughout. You don't have to fancy highbrow art to appreciate this entertaining police yarn.

Painful

I find the information about art theft interesting, and this book was fascinating for that reason. The description of Charlie Hill and his family, for example, read like the author’s unedited, gushing interview notes. Please, for the love of god, show, don’t tell. Maybe it was the overblown admiration, but I couldn’t stand any character (yeah, I understand that they’re all real people) in this book. I hated them all to a man. And yes, all men.

There were so many segues to describe other heists and adventures that I often wasn’t sure if we were still talking about the original story or not. I thought they were not set off from the main story well enough.

The narrator does not attempt any unique voice other than his own regular reading voice. His reading voice is okay, but the way he pronounced French words and the names of non-English people was painful. Even hearing him say British English phrases in his American accent was off-putting. I’m not sure why he was chosen to read this book, and made a book I already wasn’t enjoying worse.

Overall, although I generally enjoy this genre and style of writing, this book was not for me.

Fascinating with a top notch narrator!!!

I have always been interested in this case but the story of the recovery of The Scream is a thrilling rollercoaster ride! Add Sean Crisden and you have landed in audio Book heaven!

Meandering .,

this book ended up being a little bit painful, though the content was reasonably interesting and the narrator did fine. we thought we were getting a book about an art heist and the detectives trying to solve it. in reality we got a book that was more a wandering set of flashbacks about the main detective with the heist as the backdrop. it was a short book to begin with but very little had to do with the actual robbery, and that was spread out and dribbles all over the place as there was a tangent on a tangent on a tangent. while the content was interesting, the book was not. seems contradictory but it was just hard to focus with the jumps all over the place. The second book I am going to return out of many many purchases.

Riveting

Good story, great pace. Enough detail and history so the listener can understand the context, while the human element keeps you hooked.

So much more than I expected...

Fast moving memoir with gripping action, an education in the world of art, and a wonderful series of whodunnits. I took off work because I couldn't stop reading this!

Truly a Classic story, great book

Truly a Classic story, of art crime, the author does a great job with giving details and background of how art crime works and
this is a great book

Fast paced, very interesting recent history lesson

I remembered some cases, heard of many, and learned the back stories giving me such a better picture of art, artists and the thefts in general. I found myself reaching for my tablet to view this art being spoken of. The trivia was great. This performance was really engaging, and made all the characters full, and easy to follow.