Art for ransom

These two books make mutually illuminating and surprisingly contrasting companions, given the similarity of their subjects. Both are written by those with hands-on experience in the field of art preservation and security. Sandy Nairne was Director of Programmes at the Tate Gallery in 1994 when two important paintings by J.M.W. Turner were stolen while on loan to an exhibition in Frankfurt, and was a key player in their eventual recovery. When Anthony Amore became Security Director at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston in 2005, he immediately picked up the threads of the investigation into the theft of three Rembrandts and other works which had been stolen from the museum 15 years previously. Despite energetically re-evaluating existing information and gathering new data, the case remains unresolved and the paintings are still missing.

Amore has enlisted Tom Mashberg, an investigative journalist intimate with the details of the Rembrandt heist, as co-author, and this inevitably makes for a racier read than Nairne’s stolid account of the Turner story.