2012: Joshua Knelman, Hot Art

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Description

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.

Judges' Comments

In Hot Art, Joshua Knelman takes what seems like a rarefied topic—art theft—and produces an engrossing narrative that is as riveting as any best-selling mystery novel, except that all of it is true. Even readers who aren’t mourning the loss of the family Monet will be drawn into Knelman’s deeply researched portrait of calculating art thieves and the handful of dedicated investigators who track them around the globe, often for years at a time. It is a fast-paced story that reveals how art theft is not the work of bored aristocratic millionaires, as Hollywood might have us believe, but rather the work of organized crime syndicates who implicate the often priceless paintings and sculptures in money laundering and drug trafficking. Hot Art is a hugely satisfying, real-life detective story that will surprise and intrigue you and keep you reading until the very last page. 

Learn More

• Publisher: Douglas & McIntyre
• Website: douglas-mcintyre.com/products/9781771000697

Explore the works of our previous Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction winners.