The Art Thief

The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession by Michael Finkel  221 pp.

This is the fascinating and unusual story of French art thief Stéphane Breitwieser who stole over 200 artworks worth $2 billion. Breitwieser made his thefts from museums, galleries, and cathedrals all over Europe with the aid of his girlfriend who acted as lookout. The stolen items totaled a fortune but they were not stolen to be resold. Breitwieser kept all the items in his small room where he could admire them daily and eventually had more than the room could hold. He also believed he was rescuing the artworks from the museums he called "prisons for art". His thieving became an obsession/addiction and even though his girlfriend pleaded with him and ultimately left him over it he just couldn't stop. The tension in the story increases with each theft until he is ultimately caught. It's an unusual and intriguing story. See Kevin's blog about it.

The Family Remains

The Family Remains by Lisa Jewell (2022) 371 pages

Human bones are found in a bag in the Thames River, and are eventually linked to the deaths of three people in a mansion in Chelsea thirty years ago. Meanwhile, a woman‒Lucy‒is reunited with Libby, a daughter she had in her teens, while she and her two younger children are living with Henry, her very odd brother. When Lucy and Henry were young, they lived in that mansion in Chelsea, and fled, and are now using different names. Meanwhile, Libby's boyfriend is a journalist who has tracked down Phineas, the man who is Libby's father, and Henry (who sometimes calls himself Phineas) is obsessed with wanting to see him again. In yet another related side story, a woman named Rachel falls for a man named Michael, who had been married to Lucy at one time.

The setting moves between England and Chicago and France. The time shifts between 2017 and 2019. The well-drawn characters include the very odd, the very sweet, the very bad, a young computer sleuth, a motorcycle tour guide, and more. The detective on the case is Samuel Owusu, and he tallies up all the lies that keep coming. But what has really happened? I found this a compelling read, with lots of surprises.

Medusa's web

Medusa's web / Tim Powers, 358 p.

I love the way Tim Powers weaves the supernatural together with actual history in his books--I often end up wishing I could read his research notes when I finish one of his novels. Old Hollywood doesn't do much for me, though, so I just read this one for the twisty story. After their Aunt Amity's suicide, Scott and his sister Madeline return to Amity's old mansion, where they were raised along with their cousins Ariel and Claimayne. The cousins are both addicted to using spiders, symbols that allow the viewer to possess another's body in another time and possibly extend life, if the viewer can stay in the new body. Ariel is fighting to abstain from using spiders, but Claimayne's health is clearly failing (spider use exerts a price) and he's obviously plotting something. Scott has his own (more mundane) addiction to alcohol to fight, while trying to save Madeline from possession beyond the grave by Amity and dealing with his cousins' antagonism. Towards the end there are some amazing action sequences. I don't think this will bump Last Call from its spot as my favorite Tim Powers book, but I liked it a lot.

The Gun / Fuminori Nakamura, translated by Allison Markin Powell, 198 pp.

A short, strange, and affecting novel.  Nishikawa, a young university student, happens to stumble across a crime scene and finds himself a gun owner as a result.  The novel tracks his slide into complete obsession with the weapon, to the detriment of his personal relationships, and, ultimately, his sanity.

Told in a disturbingly flat first-person narrative style, Nakamura seems to have hit on something I've talked about with friends but that I don't hear much about in the wider culture: gun love as a form of idolatry.  Frequent uneasy references to American cultural hegemony round out a disturbing, if not entirely pleasurable, read.