 First edition | |
| Author | Ian Rankin |
|---|---|
| Country | Scotland |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Crime fiction |
| Publisher | Orion Press |
Publication date | 2008 |
| Pages | 272 pp |
| ISBN | 0-7528-9070-0 |
| OCLC | 232712930 |
Doors Open is a 2008 novel by crime writer Ian Rankin. [1] [2] It was his first stand-alone thriller in over 10 years. The story was originally published as a serial in The New York Times Magazine .
Mike Mackenzie is a software entrepreneur who has sold his company for a substantial amount of money, but is now bored and looking for a new thrill. His new-found wealth has funded a genuine interest in art so when his friend Professor Robert Gissing presents him with a plan for the perfect crime. With a vast collection but limited wall space, the National Gallery has many more valuable works of art in storage than it could ever display. The plan is to stage a heist at the Granton storage depot on "Doors Open Day" during which a selected group of paintings will be "stolen". The gang will then give the appearance of having panicked and fled without the works of art, but will have switched the real paintings with high quality forgeries good enough to convince anyone investigating the matter that no theft has been committed.
Intrigued, Mike willingly helps set that plan in motion. As they begin to it out, it becomes clear that they need some "professional assistance" and a chance encounter with Chib Calloway, a local gangster who Mike went to school with, fulfils that need.
A television film of the book has been produced, starring Douglas Henshall as Mike Mackenzie, Ken Collard as Allan Cruickshank and Stephen Fry as Robert Gissing. [3] Filming started in Edinburgh in April 2012, [4] and the programme was aired on Boxing Day on ITV. The adaptation switches the location of the heist from the National Gallery to a Scottish bank.
Rankin's 2002 short story collection Beggars Banquet includes a story "Herbert in Motion" (originally published 1996-1997). Its plot is also concerned with the theft of undisplayed works of art from the storage facilities of a major gallery by a curator, and their replacement with high quality forgeries to mask the crime.
Forgery is a white-collar crime that generally refers to the false making or material alteration of a legal instrument with the specific intent to defraud. Tampering with a certain legal instrument may be forbidden by law in some jurisdictions but such an offense is not related to forgery unless the tampered legal instrument was actually used in the course of the crime to defraud another person or entity. Copies, studio replicas, and reproductions are not considered forgeries, though they may later become forgeries through knowing and willful misrepresentations.
Art theft, sometimes called artnapping, is the stealing of paintings, sculptures, or other forms of visual art from galleries, museums or other public and private locations. Stolen art is often resold or used by criminals as collateral to secure loans. Only a small percentage of stolen art is recovered—an estimated 10%. Many nations operate police squads to investigate art theft and illegal trade in stolen art and antiquities.
Art forgery is the creation and sale of works of art which are falsely credited to other, usually more famous artists. Art forgery can be extremely lucrative, but modern dating and analysis techniques have made the identification of forged artwork much simpler.
Marc Evans is a British director of film and television, whose credits include the films House of America, Resurrection Man and My Little Eye.
Elmyr de Hory was a Hungarian-born painter and art forger, who is said to have sold over a thousand art forgeries to reputable art galleries all over the world. His forgeries garnered celebrity from a Clifford Irving book, Fake (1969), and a documentary essay film by Orson Welles, F for Fake (1974).
Vincenzo Peruggia was an Italian museum worker, artist, and thief, most famous for stealing the Mona Lisa from the Louvre museum in Paris on 21 August 1911.
The Thomas Crown Affair is a 1999 American romantic heist film directed by John McTiernan, written by Leslie Dixon and Kurt Wimmer and is a remake of the 1968 film of the same name. Its story follows Thomas Crown, a billionaire who steals a painting from an art gallery and is pursued by an insurance investigator with the two falling in love. It stars Pierce Brosnan, Rene Russo, and Denis Leary.
Eduardo de Valfierno, who posed as a marqués (marquis), was supposedly an Argentine con man who allegedly masterminded the theft of the Mona Lisa in 1911. There are serious doubts as to whether or not he existed.
Resurrection Men is a 2002 novel by Ian Rankin. It is the thirteenth of the Inspector Rebus novels. It won the Edgar Award for Best Novel in 2004.
Kempton Cannon Bunton was a disabled British pensioner and unemployed bus driver who confessed to stealing Francisco Goya's painting Portrait of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery in London in 1961. The theft of the painting was the subject of the October 2015 BBC Radio 4 drama Kempton and the Duke, and the 2020 movie The Duke.
Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee is a 1633 oil-on-canvas painting by the Dutch Golden Age painter Rembrandt van Rijn. It was previously in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston but was stolen in 1990 and remains missing. The painting depicts the biblical story of Jesus calming the storm on the Sea of Galilee, specifically as it is described in the fourth chapter of the Gospel of Mark. It is Rembrandt's only seascape.
The Art of the Steal is a 2013 Canadian comedy film written and directed by Jonathan Sobol. It stars Kurt Russell, Jay Baruchel, Chris Diamantopoulos, Matt Dillon, and Katheryn Winnick. It was shown at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival.
The theft of The Weeping Woman from the National Gallery of Victoria took place on 2 August 1986 in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. The stolen work was one of a series of paintings by Pablo Picasso all known as The Weeping Woman and had been purchased by the gallery for A$1.6 million in 1985—at the time the highest price paid by an Australian art gallery for an artwork. A group calling itself "Australian Cultural Terrorists" claimed responsibility, making a number of demands in letters to the then-Victorian Minister for the Arts, Race Mathews. The demands included increases to funding for the arts; threats were made that the painting would be destroyed. After an anonymous tip-off to police, the painting was found undamaged in a locker at Spencer Street railway station on 19 August 1986. The theft still remains unsolved.
Doors Open is a 2012 Scottish thriller heist film directed by Marc Evans, starring Douglas Henshall, Stephen Fry, Lenora Crichlow and Kenneth Collard. It is based on the 2008 novel of the same name by Ian Rankin, about a self-made millionaire, an art professor and a banker, who come together to undertake an audacious art heist. The film was commissioned by ITV and produced by Stephen Fry's Sprout Pictures production company. It was officially released on 26 December 2012 in the UK.
In the early morning hours of March 18, 1990, thirteen works of art were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Guards admitted two men posing as police officers responding to a disturbance call, and the thieves tied the guards up and looted the museum over the next hour. The case is unsolved; no arrests have been made and no works have been recovered. The stolen works have been valued at hundreds of millions of dollars by the FBI and art dealers. The museum is offering a $10 million reward for information leading to the art's recovery, the largest bounty ever offered by a private institution.
Portrait of a Lady is an oil on canvas painting by Gustav Klimt, painted between 1916 and 1917. The painting measures 60 by 55 centimetres. It depicts a portrait of a female figure, composed in an unusually lively expressionistic style. It was acquired by the Galleria Ricci-Oddi in Piacenza in 1925.
The Bonded Vault heist was the August 1975 robbery of the Bonded Vault Company, a commercial safe-deposit business occupying a vault inside Hudson Fur Storage in Providence, Rhode Island. It served as the unofficial "bank" used by the Patriarca crime family and associates. The stolen valuables were worth about $30 million. According to The Providence Journal, it was among the biggest heists in US history and resulted in the longest and costliest criminal trial in Rhode Island history.
Woman's Head is a 1939 painting by Pablo Picasso. It is a depiction of Dora Maar, Picasso's companion at the time. Picasso donated the work to the people of Greece in recognition of their resistance against the Axis during the Second World War. Woman's Head was first exhibited in 1949, alongside other donated works, at the Institut Français in Athens. It was not shown again until an exhibition starting in 1980 at the National Gallery and was on continuous show from 2011 until the gallery closed for renovation in 2012. In January 2012 Woman's Head was stolen from the closed gallery, alongside a painting by Piet Mondrian. It was recovered from a gorge near Athens in June 2021 and the alleged thief was arrested.
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