Book review: The Art of the Con - a dissection of fakers

Late last month, an art dealer named David Carter pleaded guilty to seven counts of fraud in a British court for passing off cheap bric-a-brac paintings he found on the internet as originals by Alfred Wallis, an early 20th-century painter known for producing marine scenes that toyed with perspective and depth. This came just weeks after a pair of German men were accused of trying to ply a fake Alberto Giacometti sculpture to an undercover detective. The plot - it's a thick one - involved one of the men's 92-year-old former mother-in-law and an infamous Dutch forger who once kept an entire warehouse full of knock-off Giacometti bronzes.

Dip into the news on any given month and chances are you will find similar stories about art world ignominy, from the British copyist churning out oils attributed to Winston Churchill to the Manhattan dealer pushing looted Indian artefacts. There is something irresistible about that point where art and crime intersect: the money, the egos, the country club types - not to mention all the talk about provenance and brush strokes and craquelure (those cracks that form in the varnish of painting as it ages).

Anthony M. Amore would know a thing or two about the world of art swindles. For the past decade, he has served as head of security at Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, which was famously robbed in 1990 of several Rembrandts and a Vermeer.

Three years ago he published, with investigative journalist Tom Mashberg, the book Stealing Rembrandts: The Untold Story of Notorious Art Heists, which explored the colourful history of thefts of works by the 17th-century Dutch master, an activity that has involved machine guns and speed boats.

Now Amore is back with a new book that explores similar territory. The Art of the Con: The Most Notorious Fakes, Frauds, and Forgeries in the Art World looks at some of the most high-profile cases of art skulduggery from the past couple of decades.