Portrait of Thief

 Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li, 384 pages.

Will Chen is a senior at Harvard, a Chinese American, an art history major, and (after witnessing a break-in at the museum he works at and a subsequent job offer) a thief of stolen art. When he's offered a job by a Chinese billionaire to steal a series of statues that were looted from the old summer Palace in Beijing from five western museums he quickly gathers a team to plan some heists. The members of the team have skills that are almost relevant to pulling heists (software engineer is almost like hacker, and street racing is close enough to get away driving) and they quickly find themselves in over their heads. 

I was really excited when I first read about this book, because art heists for repatriation sounds super fun. And the book is super fun, although it might be a little generous to call the art theft in this book heists. What I wasn't expecting, but quite enjoyed, was how much of many of our thieves motivation comes from the existential terror of being in your early twenties and having no idea what to do with your life, a problem made even more complex by the variety of ways that all of our characters interact with their own Chinese identities. This book is very fun, and definitely worth the read, but I wouldn't read it if you're wanting a heist story, and I would try not to take the details of the action too seriously.