Ex-Scotland Yard copper and art-theft go-to guy Charley Hill holds a distinctly unromantic view of the world of art theft. It’s an approach not always followed by this book about Hill’s work, which at times elevates its subject to embarrassing levels of very un-British hero worship. American journalist Edward Dolnick paints the former US Army veteran and British policeman as a fearless crusader, prepared to throw himself into the thick of the criminal underworld to recover a painting.
During the 15 years in the 1980s and ’90s that Hill served as an undercover detective with the art and antiques squad at Scotland Yard, he took part in several high-profile operations and his most famed success came when in 1994 he worked to recover Munch’s ‘The Scream’ from a gang of Norwegian criminals who had stolen the painting just as the Winter Olympics opened in Lillehammer. Hill posed as a representative of the John Paul Getty Museum who was willing to pay top dollar to return to America with the painting. Greed overtook logic in the thieves’ minds and they leapt at the bait.
Dolnick’s book is strong on structure: he succeeds in threading the account of Hill’s recovery of ‘The Scream’ through the entire work, allowing him to meander at will around other fascinating details of Hill’s career and to examine the world of art theft in pleasing, lucid detail, always in company with Hill’s calm voice of authority. Most compelling is Hill’s refusal to believe that much, if any, art is stolen to order. Luckily, Hill and Dolnick manage to scrape away the veneer of mystery and still keep their subject exciting. If only Dolnick held back a little on the purple prose and the lionising.
