The Lost Mona Lisa by R.A. Scotti

Sometimes you buy a book that turns into a real gem. Well, this happy feeling happened to me when I bought the ' Lost Mona Lisa by R.A. Scotti. This is a really wonderful book. The author takes you through the extraordinary true story of the greatest art theft in history. The account of this tale reads better than a fictional one. There were weird and strange happenings when the Mona Lisa disappeared from the Louvre, for instance, when the museum finally opened its doors without their star attraction, hundreds of grieving Parisians queued up to view the blank space where the Mona Lisa had been smiling the week before. They didn't queue up to see the other 3 thousand paintings but just to stare at a blank dusty space ! As incomprehensible as this may sound, this is exactly what happened. The queues stretched several blocks where there had never been a wait to enter the Louvre before. Some say, this was the beginning of Modern Art. I also loved the way the author wrote nuggets of historical information in the most entertaining and amusing way. It sets the atmosphere in Paris in such a manner that you can imagine yourself being transported exactly in that era of the afternoon of Sunday, 20 of August 1911 when the painting vanished from the walls of the Louvre. It describes, with a wealth of interesting information what was happening in the inner sactum of the Louvre and who were the people who run it and where they were at the time. The failings that took place. It really is so good, I could not recommend it enough. It is thoroughly well researched from many sources, including newspaper stories of the time. Well, that is my humble opinion.