The Mona Lisa Vanishes

 


Fun listen.  I'd listened to it a couple of years ago, but we are doing it for a book club at our turkey day gathering.  So I thought I'd better brush up on it.  It's actually quite delightful and I learned a lot of intriguing things about art, Leonardo DaVinci, the Louvre, the Mona Lisa itself, and early 1911 police work in France.

The downside of the book is keeping track of the French named characters in the book.  The names all sound alike.  Also, the book moves back and forth between countries, peoples, years, events, and frankly, it's a challenge to keep up with all of it.  I think reading it and seeing the names and places would make it infinitely easier.  

For that reason, I purchased a copy of the actual book, which I will glance through before the book discussion.  I give it 3 and 1/2 stars.

As a side note: while reading this book, an art theft occurred at the Louvre on Sunday October 19, 2025.  It was done in broad daylight by a gouger of four men.  It has had lots of humors commentary and memes and IG posts.  Here's what some people said about the heist:

Every once in a while, a story comes along formed by a perfect synergy of comprehensible crime and real-time intrigue. These moments are like precious stones, and the internet goes berserk for them. One such tale began on Sunday, when robbers smashed a Seine-adjacent gallery window of the Louvre and made off with eight pieces of historically priceless jewelry.

Clara: Who needs yoga or deep breathing exercises when we have French heists of Napoleonic jewels to read about.

Maisa: Someone walked into the Louvre—in broad daylight—spent roughly the length of a rushed matcha run in a jewellery case, and walked out moments later with the French Crown Jewels.

Jo Piazza: France’s ministry of culture said the stolen items were:

  • A tiara and brooch belonging to Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III

  • An emerald necklace and a pair of emerald earrings from Empress Marie Louise

  • A tiara, necklace and single earring from the sapphire set that belonged to Queen Marie-Amélie and Queen Hortense

  • A brooch known as the “reliquary brooch”

Maisa: They arrived in a lift, left on scooters, and—according to one witness—stopped at a red light on their way home. That’s not just audacity, that’s etiquette.

Clara: Considering the loneliness epidemic and the anti-intellectualism we find ourselves traversing as a society, it’s nice to see a group of friends get together and make museum plans for a Saturday morning. Gives a girl a bit of hope.

Jo Piazza: All of the stolen pieces are part of the national Crown Jewels collection, which means they aren’t privately insured (fascinating detail!). Recovery efforts began within hours, because once the jewelry is broken down into individual gems, they’re gonna be almost impossible to trace.

Clara: Like, I suspect, many other people, I guess I harbor a tiny bit of fascination with art heists—conceptually speaking, of course.

Sloane Crosley: It’s not that people are salivating at the idea of criminality, but some are agnostic about—nay, amused by—the robbery. Part of this is because fires aren’t funny and heists kind of are. They are painted as sexy, madcap or soulful in pop culture (“Ocean’s Eleven,” “The Thomas Crown Affair,” even “The Goldfinch”).

A museum heist is so deliciously whimsical. It’s the cardigan of crimes, dashing, polite, borderline literary. Nobody’s grandma loses her pension, no innocent bystander is traumatized, and nothing explodes except the collective imagination. This is the sort of news story that reads like a short film: four shadowy figures, a perfect plan, and a little red-light courtesy on the getaway.

Jo Piazza: There were no smoke bombs or cinematic laser grids or someone dropping in from a ceiling. Just four people who understood museum security and knew their way around construction equipment and power tools.

Maisa: Of course this is satire, I’m not advocating for crime. But the romanticism of it, the elegance, the precision, that’s undeniably seductive. It’s proof that imagination still exists in a world allergic to surprise. In an era of scams and data leaks and faceless corruption, a good old-fashioned jewel heist feels almost wholesome.

An example of what was stolen from the Louvre in 2025:



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