The Art of the Steal: The Museum Heist--a New Novel "Solves" the Biggest Real-Life Crime in History

    BOSTON, MA, September 30, 2015 /24-7PressRelease/ -- When thieves broke into Boston's famed Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990 and removed half a billion dollars' worth of art, it was not only the largest art heist in history; it was also the largest single robbery the world has ever known. Twenty-five years later, despite a multi-million-dollar reward and the combined efforts of the FBI, Scotland Yard, INTERPOL and the Canadian Mounted Police, the treasured art is still missing, the perpetrators never identified. Now, in his new novel, The Museum Heist (Curiosity Books, paper, $14.95) Kameel Nasr has officially "solved" the crime in a pulsating tale of historical fiction that does for the high-end art world what The Da Vinci Code did for religion.

In the early morning hours after St. Patrick's Day, 1990, two men disguised as policemen gained access to the museum, a stately four-story Italian mansion in the Fenway district of Boston. They handcuffed the guards, wrapped their mouths with duct tape, and walked out with thirteen priceless masterpieces, including Vermeer's The Concert, a Degas, a Manet, and three irreplaceable Rembrandts.

Jump to today when all of the considerable action in Nasr's riveting novel goes into high gear. Paris, an ex-con classics professor and superbly gifted art forger, is passing the time at a self-storage facility he bought for himself in out-of-the-way New Mexico to earn a living while figuring out what to do next with his life. When a suspicious out-of-towner arrives to check on his belongings, Paris' curiosity gets the best of him. He breaks into the man's storage unit only to find the stolen art now missing for a quarter of a century. With the $10 million in reward money under his belt, Paris sets off for Boston to fulfill his dream of building a classical museum of his own--while also setting out to help the authorities nab the thieves who have eluded justice for two-and-a-half decades.

Nasr, whose The World Up Close chronicled his ten-year, 40,000-mile bicycle trip around the world, keeps the action moving in The Museum Heist by pitting his protagonist against one of the most amusingly interesting detectives to come along in years. Lieutenant Lowell--a gumshoe who quite literally relies on his gut to help him in his job--is obsessed with the digestive track and as well-versed in intestinal flora and the working of the small intestine as his primary suspect, Paris, is knowledgeable about the Trojan War, Odysseus, and the Pythagoreans. After years of trying to devise a method of identifying criminals through the molecules the body emits (criminals can hide fingerprints, Lowell concludes, but there's no way to perfume out the distinctive molecules coming out their mouth or rectum), Lowell has given up. Bodily effluvia notwithstanding, Lowell is a worthy opponent for the wily Paris, who may or may not know a lot more than he's letting on about the original heist for which he's collected the hefty award. Is Paris leading everyone--including the Gardner Museum curator who seems to be falling for him--on a wild goose chase under the guise of trying to trap the real thieves? Or is Paris just what he claims to be--a nice, reformed history scholar/art forger, who simply wants to use his new- found wealth for the betterment of the art world.

Paris--and clearly the author--possess enormous amounts of scholarly information on the classics, Greek mythology, and especially the arts. Part of the pleasure of reading The Museum Heist is the symphony of interesting knowledge Nasr treats the reader to in the service of a crime thriller that never quits for a second. This is a novel full of smart, cultured characters. There's a lot of enjoyable learning to be had as Paris squares off with Lowell as the detective tries to find out what's really going on.

Author Kameel Nasr has created a wonderful mystery novel from a real-life crime that remains a mystery itself to this day. This learned author knows so much about art and so much about the heist, it would come as little to surprise to any reader if Nasr ended up someday collecting the reward--which is still outstanding--all for himself.

About the Author
Kameel Nasr is a Boston writer, international adventure cyclist, tango dancer, spiritual seeker, and patron of art and music. His books on travel and a study of Middle-East terrorism have been published in several formats and languages; his work has been cited in numerous articles and journals. The Museum Heist is the first in a Cultural Cozy Mystery Series.

For more information, visit www.kameelnasr.com.

Media contact: Victor Gulotta
Gulotta Communications, Inc.
617-630-9286
http://www.booktours.com
victor(at)booktours(dot)com

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