Probation officer gives office BJ to boot-camp teen 1
Her Diary Is Even Scarier 2
Jury Seeks Death for Slasher 3

Flawless: Master Thieves Take Down a Vault in the Largest Heist in World History

Saturday, March 13, 2010 at 5:30 am
diamonds-hands_opt.jpg
​Today's Book Review brings the tale of the largest diamond heist in history: The takedown of a vault in Antwerp's famous diamond center. Though a few people were eventually convicted, most remain at large -- and their $100 million-plus take has never been recovered...

Flawless: Inside the Largest Diamond Heist in History
By Scott Andrew Selby and Greg Campbell
336 pages, Union Square Press

Flawless-cover.jpg
​The Deal: The School of Turin, as they were dubbed by newspapers, was a loose group of Italian thieves known for seamlessly breaking into jewelry stores, beating sophisticated security, and walking away without anyone getting hurt.

But in 2001, they decided to go for the World Cup of scores: The Diamond Center building in the world's capital of gem trading, Antwerp, Belgium. Posing as a small-time trader, Leonardo Notarbartolo rented an office in the center, spending two years casing the place. When he and his fellow thieves launched their attack in 2003, they managed to beat the vault -- as well as cameras and motion and light censors -- to walk away with more than $108 million in cash and jewels.

We won't spoil the ending, but the almost perfect crime went immediately awry due to a lone mistake. The bad guys dumped their garbage on public land guarded by a zealous steward with a thing about littering.

To this day, only a few have been caught. And the gems and money have never been recovered.

Greg-Campbell.jpg
Authors Scott Andrew Selby and Greg Campbell (above) provide peerless research -- which is both an asset and a curse
​The Upside: Authors Scott Andrew Selby and Greg Campbell have delivered an exhaustively researched book. They retrace Notarbartolo's surveillance in the years before the heist, and offer educated speculation on those who likely composed his band of thieves. They painstakingly take apart every last move of the heist, examining everything from the vulnerability of the vault to the lax security of the Diamond Center.

For those with a fascination for the anatomy of a perfect crime, Flawless is for you.

Reality Check: That exhaustive research can also be an impediment to the reader. Selby and Campbell's obsession with detail and mechanics has a way of slowing the story. What is ultimately a caper story is a tad too often rendered dry and studious by technical analysis of  security measures. Though much of it is pertinent to the story, it can get weary, turning what could have been a thriller into something of a textbook for lengthy passages.

Closing Arguments: The occasionally textbook prose restricts Flawless to being a good book, rather than a great one. It's simply too easy to put down when you're reading about the specifics of locks at 1 a.m.

Grade: B+

Tags: Belgium, Book Reviews, The Savvy Criminal

More links from around the web!

Email Print