My Thoughts on the Book, The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession, 3/9/2026…

Don’t you hate it when you root for a character, wanting, hoping, wishing that they’d do the right thing, only to be disappointed when they slip back into bad habits?

That’s how I felt about Stéphane Breitwieser, the subject of this book, when he fell back into thievery. After a famous, illustrious career of art larceny—executing over 200 heists, stealing over 300 items, estimated at a value of $2 billion—he wanted to repent and reform. He thought of becoming a security consultant for museums and auction houses, he dreamed of starting a family, he wanted to traverse the straight and narrow. Yeah, no. Recidivism is a thing.

But I enjoyed the book nonetheless. Author Michael Finkel portrayed Breitweiser as sympathetic, a mama’s boy, a faithful lover, and a lover of art with the heart of a collector. And he was all these things. The only problem was that the thief had no money to collect fabulous pieces of art. So he stole them. And collected them. And was ultimately caught, tried (in France and Switzerland), and sentenced for his crimes.

Other people in Breitweiser’s life, including his supportive-at-the-time-of-the-robberies girlfriend and his enabling mother, ultimately turned their backs on him after all was said and done (he mended fences with his mother, but the damage was irreparable). With no friends to lean on when he was released, it was no wonder that he fell back into crime. Even his father made a reappearance in his life, only to step back away when Stéphane stole again. As of right now, after a 2023 conviction in Sarreguemines, France, he is under house arrest. I guess he’ll never learn. Pity.

If you’re interested in art and interested in the psychology of thieves, I highly recommend this book.