THE ART THIEF: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession, by Michael FinkelAt first, Stéphane Breitwieser, the subject of Michael Finkel’s “The Art Thief,” appears to be having an enviable amount of fun. Twenty-five years old and living with his girlfriend, Anne-Catherine Kleinklaus, in a small set of upstairs rooms in his mother’s home in a “hardscrabble” manufacturing suburb in eastern France, Breitwieser is unburdened by such quotidian concerns as a job, making rent or planning for the future. He fancies himself a purer sort of soul, so devoted to beauty he must, in Finkel’s words, “gorge on it.” Over the course of a dizzying 200 pages that are also an effective advertisement for Swiss Army knives (Breitwieser’s only tool), he removes artwork after artwork from museums — a.k.a. “prisons for art” — and becomes “perhaps the most successful and prolific art thief who has ever lived.” He piled all $2 billion worth of artifacts he amassed over eight years into that same attic in his mother Mireille Stengel’s “nondescript” stucco house. Finkel includes satisfying evidence of this astounding loot in a color insert that shows a crammed jumble of “ethereal” ivory carvings, shining silver goblets, unctuous oil paintings and more.

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Persons: Michael Finkel, Stéphane Breitwieser, Michael Finkel’s “, ”, Anne, Catherine Kleinklaus, Mireille Stengel’s, Finkel, George Petel’s, Adam, Eve ”, Napoleon himself, Stengel Organizations: Swiss Army, — Locations: France