(Un-)happy Gardner Museum robbery anniversary today; hear the author tomorrow

In the early hours of March 18, 1990, two men dressed as cops stepped to the side entrance of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, buzzed one of two guards on the overnight shift and convinced him to let them in. They left 81 minutes later with a dozen artworks, several of them masterpieces, altogether worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The art has never been found - that's the unhappy part - despite an ongoing investigation that has crisscrossed the globe and touched familiar players like Myles Connor, Whitey  Bulger and the IRA.

But as you may have read in the papers the last few days, there finally seems to be a consensus on who the two thieves were; one is dead and one is in prison. Still, there's no sign of the booty, which included Rembrandt's The Storm on the Sea of Galilee (Right, Image from the FBI site here). The whole saga is freshly told in the new book "The Gardner Heist" by Washington journalist Ulrich Boser. It's the fascinating - though ultimately frustrating - tale of Boser's contacts with most of the principals in the case as he tries to run down the leads himself. The book also offers a primer in the stolen-art trade, namely how easy it often is to steal and how difficult it is to unload. Forget about the idea that the Gardner paintings are in the secret basement gallery of some weirdo billionaire; Boser says "the Dr. No theory" of art theft is pretty much a myth. This crime seems to have consisted of a well-executed plan followed by decades of confusion.

If you're interested, Boser speaks tomorrow night at 6 at the Boston Public Library's Rabb Hall, at the Central Library, Copley Square. Here he is talking about the case....

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