Sketching in the details of the Gardner heist

It's fair to say that when a criminal investigation has detectives turning to the assistance of psychics and paranormals, it has hit a rocky point. And so it goes for the investigators working the notorious Gardner heist, one of history's greatest unsolved mysteries. But it's hardly for lack of effort. It's just that so many of the prime suspects have wound up murdered.

In The Gardner Heist: The True Story of the World's Largest Unsolved Art Theft, journalist-turned-gumshoe Ulrich Boser gives his own account of the burglary of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. On 19 March 1990 - St Patrick's Day, a fact that would later become a clue - two men dressed as police officers talked their way into the museum after hours, gagged and bound two night watchmen, and made off with some of the world's most precious paintings. The 13 paintings ripped crudely from their frames, including masterpieces by Vermeer, Rembrandt and Degas - a haul valued at around $500m (£347m) - have not been seen since.

The first of many obsessives to star in Boser's tale is none other than socialite Isabella Stewart Gardner, the museum's founder and namesake. Boser details the incredible dedication (and money) that the heiress put toward her pristine collection of Old Masters, early moderns, and other masterworks.

But it's not long before the story plunges into the murky depths of contemporary organised crime. Following in the footsteps of detective-to-the-art-world Harold Smith, Boser follows the works through whispers in the underworld. In following the old leads collected by Smith (who died in 2005), Boser tracks the true cast of characters that surround the missing paintings and brings new facts to light in a mystery now entering its second decade.

Boser rejects the idea of a shadowy "Dr No" villain, presumed by many to have masterminded the heist for personal enjoyment. He explains that art theft is more mundane and fantastical than that: stolen art is sometimes fenced to insurance adjusters, or serves as a black-market bond.

Boser's investigation leads him to suspects ranging from James "Whitey" Bulger, the notorious Boston-based Winter Hill Gang crime lord and the FBI's second most wanted fugitive, to Thomas "Slab" Murphy, the IRA lieutenant who organised the Warrenpoint ambush. Myles Connor – a former rockabilly and probably the greatest art thief who ever lived - is just one of the violent, colourful figures in Boser's tale of hardnosed FBI agents, corrupt Boston police, and slimy mob lawyers.

By Boser's accounting, every cat burglar between Boston and Dublin has a bead on the missing masterpieces. To his credit, the book is a thrill despite the frustrating nature of the investigation, in which he painstakingly tracks audacious leads from mendacious thugs only to arrive at dead ends. And a few dead suspects. And to be sure, no art.

Still, Boser does turn up some new evidence and makes a conclusive case for the identity of the thieves who did the job. The mystery remains unsolved, but the case is reinvigorated in its retelling by a man who fully appreciates the value of the masterpieces and the magnitude of the criminal conspiracy that carried them away in the night.

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