Fictional Historical Art Heist Caper
Review of the Titan Books / Hard Case Crime Kindle eBook edition (September 18, 2018).

It meant nothing, but it meant everything. It was all like a movie—hell, it was a whole damn film festival. The problem is, you’re always the leading man in your mind. In real life, you may wake up to find out you’re just an extra.

I was curious to read Charlesgate Confidential (2018) after discovering Doviak's Lowdown Road (2023). The earlier book has the same sort of extrapolation of historical events as did the new one, which was built around Evel Knievel's Snake River Canyon Jump of 1974. Charlesgate Confidential takes the story of the still unsolved (as of 2024) 1990 art heist at Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and time-shifts it back to 1946. It ties the theft into the historic Charlesgate apartment building and then continues the story with the same building's University dormitory days in 1986 and then further into its luxury condominium apartment days of 2014.

That all tends to spread the story a bit thin and I had a degree of impatience with it. The book cycles continuously through its 3 story lines of 1946 to 1986 to 2014, most of the chapters cutting off at cliffhangers. That sort of writing does build suspense, but the constant time shifts become wearisome over 60 chapters worth of material. All 3 story lines do resolve, sometimes very abruptly, but the endings still verged on Unsatisfactory Ending Alert™ material. I found reading about the historical theft and the paintings themselves to be more fascinating. See below in Trivia and Links for more on that.

See photo at https://buildingsofnewengland.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/img_7888.jpg?w=1024
The Charlesgate apartment hotel in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Image sourced from Buildings of New England.

I read Charlesgate Confidential from picking it up as a $1.99 Kindle Deal of the Day and after enjoying the same author's recent Lowdown Road (2023).

Trivia and Links
Charlesgate Confidential is part of the Hard Case Crime (2004-) series of new works, reprints, and posthumous publications of the pulp and noir crime genre founded by authors Charles Ardai and Max Phillips. GR's Listopia is not complete (as of March 2024) and the most current lists of publication can be found at Wikipedia or the Publisher's own Official Site.

See painting at https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c8/Vermeer_The_concert.JP...
See painting at https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f3/Rembrandt_Christ_in_th...

The paintings "The Concert" (1664) (above) and "Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee" (1633) (below). Images sourced from Wikipedia (see links below).

The two most famous paintings stolen in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum art heist of 1990 are Vermeer's The Concert and Rembrandt's Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee. The Vermeer is considered to be the most valuable stolen object in the world, valued at $250 Million dollars (Estimated value in 2015). ( )

Enjoyable, like the 3 storylines across different time periods, the ‘86 line was a bit bloated ( )

“Baseball and murder were both back in season, and everyone in Homicide had a full scorecard.”

This is a good read, told in three different time periods - 1946, 1986, and 2014. It's set in Boston, and there are a lot of references to places, and the Red Sox, in the town! You got stolen paintings, murders galore, and a mystery that takes some forty years to solve! The plot kept me guessing, and the three time lines were well written! My only complaint was the ending, ending. It was just a bit mundane after all the fun before it! Still, I'm glad I read it and I'd be interested to read more by this author! And I STILL can't believe that ball went through Buckner's legs...

P.S. - Just for fun, I googled this on 3/27/20. Holy moley! -
Boston, MA
4 Charlesgate E, Unit 204, Back Bay
Price$1,234,000
Bedrooms 2 Bathroom 2 Square Feet 1,127

According to the book the whole Charlesgate was built in 1891 for $170,000.
Again, holy moley! ( )