Among Thieves

Most listeners will love this latest Scott Finn adventure because it creates an imagined version of one of the biggest, yet unsolved, art heists in history--the half-billion-dollar theft at the Isabella Gardner Museum in Boston in 1990. Others are going to find the plot mercilessly slow, a weakness that isn't helped much by George Guidall's methodical narration. Finn, a lawyer who is a reformed member of the Boston underworld, is called upon to defend an old friend who's involved in a minor burglary. He is drawn into the 1990 art theft case when it appears his client may have been one of the thieves. Meanwhile, some of Boston's Irish gangsters begin turning up dead. Could someone be exacting revenge on this group? There are some informative glimpses of Boston's poor neighborhoods, but they don't offset the author's meandering into several subplots. On a positive note, Guidall has his Irish brogue down pat. A.L.H. (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

November 30, 2009
The real-life 1990 theft of paintings currently valued at half a billion dollars from Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and never recovered provides the backdrop for Hosp's overly ambitious art world thriller. In the present day, lawyer Scott Finn thinks he's just helping an old friend, Devon Malley, out of a jam by representing Malley after Malley is arrested for knocking off a high-end clothing store. But when prominent members of Boston's criminal underworld, all of whom have connections to Malley, start turning up dead and show hallmarks of IRA-style torture, Finn realizes he has a much bigger case on his hands. Twenty years earlier, Devon helped rob the Gardner museum along with ex-IRA operative Liam Kilbranish, who has returned to exact revenge on the people he believes hid the paintings. Despite the promising premise, Hosp (Innocence
) quickly gets mired in myriad needless side plots, all of which distract from the allure of the famous heist.