May 7, 1994: Munch's The Scream recovered three months after being stolen from a museum in Oslo.

I'd forgotten about all of the bizarre details of that theft... most notably that it only took 50 seconds and that the thieves left a note that said, "Thousand thanks for the bad security!" Talk about adding insult to injury, YEESH.

Anyway, when it comes to art thieves, the first thing I think of is (probably obviously) Ally Carter's Heist Society series. 

While I TOTALLY appreciated its appeal factor, I wasn't overly enthused about the first book, but Carter completely won me over with Uncommon Criminals:

While Heist Society relied on TELLing and infodumps to Set the Stage, Uncommon Criminals didn't. True, that was partly because the storyline had already been set in place in Book One, but it was mostly because the comparable section in this book—the part at the beginning where Carter reminds old readers What Is What and gets new readers up to speed—was handled much more gracefully. So that was really nice to see, and much more enjoyable to read. Recommended to the usual suspects: fans of the Gallagher Girls and chick-lit-ish mysteries.

Heist Society is going to be a movie, and I think it'll translate really well to screen—though after reading this one, I think it might be even more fun as a CW series. Now that Kat is doing the Robin Hood thing, it's basically Leverage with teenagers.

I should probably ILL Perfect Scoundrels, huh?