Mikeyy
Pearl Diver
- Joined
- Dec 7, 2006
- Messages
- 1,083
I stumbled across this book today and thought some here might like it.
An elegant crime boss, a mild-mannered detective and the world's most valuable necklace make for a ripping yarn
A tall, elegant crime boss; a mild-mannered but brilliant police inspector; a volatile Spanish jeweler; an elaborately planned theft; a cat-and-mouse game in the streets of Edwardian London and the world’s most valuable necklace — how is it that no one has turned the true story told in Molly Caldwell Crosby’s “The Great Pearl Heist” into a movie? Forget that — why is this the first book to appear on the crime in over 80 years?
Perhaps it’s just that the necklace — a gradated strand of perfectly matched pink pearls — lacked a catchy name, or a curse? Nevertheless, this was a significant piece of jewelry. In the early 20th century, before the advent of cultured pearls and when the gems could only be found in one out of hundreds of wild oysters, the necklace was fabulously precious, worth “twice the price of the Hope Diamond” according to Crosby. The New York Times dubbed it “the Mona Lisa of pearls,” an odd coincidence since Leonardo da Vinci’s painting was also stolen around the same time. The pinching of the pearl necklace — the property of one Max Mayer, a British jeweler — did constitute front page news. But Joseph Grizzard, the legendary “King of the Fences” who masterminded the theft, never told his side of the story, so there’s been no definitive firsthand account of the caper to move the story along.
http://www.salon.com/2012/12/02/the_great_pearl_heist_true_crime_in_edwardian_london/
An elegant crime boss, a mild-mannered detective and the world's most valuable necklace make for a ripping yarn
A tall, elegant crime boss; a mild-mannered but brilliant police inspector; a volatile Spanish jeweler; an elaborately planned theft; a cat-and-mouse game in the streets of Edwardian London and the world’s most valuable necklace — how is it that no one has turned the true story told in Molly Caldwell Crosby’s “The Great Pearl Heist” into a movie? Forget that — why is this the first book to appear on the crime in over 80 years?
Perhaps it’s just that the necklace — a gradated strand of perfectly matched pink pearls — lacked a catchy name, or a curse? Nevertheless, this was a significant piece of jewelry. In the early 20th century, before the advent of cultured pearls and when the gems could only be found in one out of hundreds of wild oysters, the necklace was fabulously precious, worth “twice the price of the Hope Diamond” according to Crosby. The New York Times dubbed it “the Mona Lisa of pearls,” an odd coincidence since Leonardo da Vinci’s painting was also stolen around the same time. The pinching of the pearl necklace — the property of one Max Mayer, a British jeweler — did constitute front page news. But Joseph Grizzard, the legendary “King of the Fences” who masterminded the theft, never told his side of the story, so there’s been no definitive firsthand account of the caper to move the story along.
http://www.salon.com/2012/12/02/the_great_pearl_heist_true_crime_in_edwardian_london/
