The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession – Michael Finkel

What a strange addiction—to be so overwhelmed by a piece of art that you would do anything to possess it—or is it just a sickness that seeks out lapses in security/surveillance so that something can be stolen? Whatever the motivation, twenty-something Alsatian Stéphane and his girlfriend accomplice carried out around 200 heists in France and Switzerland over a period of seven years–not for money, but for love, and stashed it all in his mother’s attic. Finkel, a connoisseur of odd criminal types has outdone himself here with his carefully detailed, and sometimes heart-pounding, life of M. Breitwieser. And, of course, at the end he includes himself in the story.