Cameron's Reviews > Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World's Stolen Treasures

Somehow, I knew that art thieves were not all really like Pierce Brosnon's Thomas Crowne, hiding Picasso's in his mane of chest hair, or like Catherine Zeta Jones getting her freak on with laser alarms. Yet, I wanted to believe that they were like that. But, "Priceless" serves to put those rumors to rest. A tell-all about the art crime industry from the FBI's pioneer in the field, the book shares tale after tale of the tawdry, seedy, and even boneheadedly simple and very un-Pierce-like world of art thieves. To me, the whole concept of art crime being considered as almost a fashionable and less threatening crime despite the cowardly looting of truly priceless objects is quite fascinating. And it is a theme that the author also keeps harping on. The stories do get a bit bogged down in the telling however. So many of the investigations tend to run into each other and share many of the same basic concepts that the reader can get a bit lost. Though he isn't the world's best story-teller, Wittman does have a pretty amazing story to tell.