000 01711nam a2200169 4500
020 _a9780307886477
024 _a759972265
050 _aHV6653.W67
082 _a364.162092
100 1 _aBen Macintyre
245 1 _aThe Napoleon of Crime
260 _bBroadway Books
300 _a384 pages
520 _aNEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF A SPY AMONG FRIENDS He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson. He is the organizer of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city. He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. . . . --Sherlock Holmes on Professor Moriarty in "The Final Problem" The Victorian era's most infamous thief, Adam Worth was the original Napoleon of crime. Suave, cunning Worth learned early that the best way to succeed was to steal. And steal he did. Following a strict code of honor, Worth won the respect of Victorian society. He also aroused its fear by becoming a chilling phantom, mingling undetected with the upper classes, whose valuables he brazenly stole. His most celebrated heist: Gainsborough's grand portrait of the Duchess of Devonshire--ancestor of Diana, Princess of Wales--a painting Worth adored and often slept with for twenty years. With a brilliant gang that included "Piano" Charley, a jewel thief, train robber, and playboy, and "the Scratch" Becker, master forger, Worth secretly ran operations from New York to London, Paris, and South Africa--until betrayal and a Pinkerton man finally brought him down. In a decadent age, Worth was an icon. His biography is a grand, dazzling tour into the gaslit underworld of the last century. . . and into the doomed genius of a criminal mastermind.
650 _aTrue Crime
999 _c16636
_d16636