Do you love a mystery? Do you love fine art? How about the fine art of murder? Or crime and fine art all at the same time?! This course is for you.

We’ll read and discuss seven new and classic crime fiction novels with art at their core, revisiting some favorite sleuths (Robert Parker’s Spenser and Daniel Silva’s Gabriel Allon) and meeting a few new ones. Some of the books will be on the lighter side, some requiring closer attention. And yes, some of the books will explore our own, right-next-door art mystery, the 1990 heist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. We’ll discuss the books as genre and literary fiction, considering how well you think each book lives up to our expectations of a compelling story, excellent writing, satisfactory conclusions—including the inevitable question: Was justice served?

The course will also explore the real world of art crime, taking a deeper dive in three lecture classes into key aspect of art crime: forgery, fraud, the thieves responsible for art theft from museums, why it’s so common, and what becomes of the stolen art. We’ll touch on the rather murky nexus of organized crime, extreme wealth, and art galleries in facilitating an underworld of obsessed (and possibly unbalanced) collectors.

The book-reading weeks will consist of brief lectures and group discussion and will include slide shows of art as well as video interviews. The three non-fiction classes will be lecture based.

Preparation time will likely be more than two hours each week, depending on the particular book and the individual’s reading speed.