Hot Art: Chasing Thieves and Detectives through the Secret World of Stolen Art [Paperback] Knelman, Joshua

Product Description Winner of the Edna Staebler Award and the Arthur Ellis Award for Non FictionThe Thomas Crown Affair meets The Devil in the White City in this fast-paced true crime story of the seedy-underbelly of international art theft. A major work of investigative journalism, Hot Art is a globetrotting mystery filled with cunning and eccentric characters.Joshua Knelman spent four years immersing himself in the mysterious world of international art theft, travelling from Cairo to New York, London, Montreal and Los Angeles. He befriends the slippery Paul, a master art thief; and gets caught up in the world of Donald Hrycyk, a detective working on a shoestring budget to recover stolen art. Through alternating chapters focusing on Paul and an international network of detectives, the story of the thief and the detective unfolds, revealing the dramatic rise of international art theft.Joshua Knelman's investigation finds there are only a handful of detectives, FBI agents and lawyers fighting a global battle against the thriving black market of international art theft estimated to be one of the largest in the world. Meanwhile, the chain of criminals moves from thugs on the street to multinational organized crime syndicates, to a global network of art dealers who wash the artworks' origins clean again. In a surprise ending, Knelman learns that corruption can appear in the unlikeliest places. Review "'OK, this is how it works,' a wanted art thief tells Knelman at a clandestine meeting on a Toronto patio. 'It's like a big shell game. All the antique and art dealers, they just pass it around from one to another'...And the deeper Knelman digs into the industry, via this first-person investigative narrative, the truer the thief's words ring." ― Canadian Business"A fascinating look at the multibillion-dollar business of art theft around the world...This is riveting non-fiction that reads like a novel, with detectives out of central casting and a twist that would make the Coen Brothers proud." ― Chatelaine"Toronto journalist Joshua Knelman ups the ante on...caper tales by presenting stories of international art theft made all the more compelling because they are true...Hot Art: Chasing Thieves and Detectives through the Secret World of Stolen Art shows collectors and aficionados why art thieves seem to have the edge in their shadowy world and that keeping the Krieghoffs under wraps is no simple matter." ― International Architecture & Design"Art theft is one of the world's largest underground markets, yet very few people know how it works. Journalist Joshua Knelman's new book, Hot Art: Chasing Thieves and Detectives through the Secret World of Stolen Art, shines a bright light on the subject." -- Myron Love ― Jewish Post News"Hot Art creeps up on you. Wickedly entertaining, it turns out to be informative, unexpected and far more thought-provoking than its cheeky 007-ish cover would suggest. Joshua Knelman's in-depth investigation of the international trade in stolen art may read like a TV crime novel, but it delves deeper than that, deftly allowing art theft to serve as an extended metaphor for exploitive, unregulated, free-for-all global capitalism...No doubt Hot Art will eventually be made into a film. Knelman's subject is a natural for Hollywood. His suspenseful writing has a filmic quality, and his characters could have walked out of a Raymond Chandler or Nathanael West novel." -- Joyce Kline ― Literary Review of Canada"Hot Art is an engrossing and thorough study of the shadow side of art fairs, galleries, museums, auction houses, private and public collectors...outstanding work of journalismï??" -- Philip Marchand ― National Post"...Read the book! It's a tour-de-force, alright -- and it comes across, in parts, as the freak love child of Raymond Chandler and Lesley Stahl! " -- Govani Shinan ― National Post"Toronto-based investigative journalist Joshua Knelman delves deeply into the phenomenon [of art theft] in his con