In Chap­ter 15, titled “The Art Thief,” we delve into the ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tion led by Alexan­dre Von der Müh­ll, one of Switzer­land’s few inspec­tors spe­cial­ized in art crime. Sit­u­at­ed in a police sta­tion office, he scru­ti­nizes sur­veil­lance footage from the Alex­is Forel Muse­um, show­cas­ing a cal­cu­lat­ed mid­day heist exe­cut­ed by a young cou­ple who manip­u­late the muse­um’s secu­ri­ty sys­tems to steal a valu­able serv­ing plat­ter. This inci­dent is part of a trou­bling rise in orga­nized muse­um thefts across Switzer­land, which Von der Müh­ll sus­pects are inter­con­nect­ed. His intense demeanor under­scores his pas­sion for jus­tice, while his col­lec­tion of nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry art reveals his appre­ci­a­tion for artis­tic her­itage.

Von der Müh­ll notes recur­ring tac­tics in these thefts—such as their pref­er­ence for less­er-known yet valu­able works from the late Renaissance—indicating that the per­pe­tra­tors pos­sess a cer­tain art savvy. These thieves demon­strate con­fi­dence, believ­ing them­selves to be incon­spic­u­ous, as evi­denced by the absence of eye­wit­ness­es and the absence of stolen items oth­er than art. The inspec­tor’s keen analy­sis leads him to the­o­rize that the cul­prits are dri­ven by poten­tial finan­cial gain in a mar­ket­place where art prices have sky­rock­et­ed over the years.

He high­lights the preva­lence of art theft glob­al­ly, with stag­ger­ing num­bers sug­gest­ing that at least fifty thou­sand art thefts occur annu­al­ly, con­tribut­ing to a crim­i­nal econ­o­my worth bil­lions. Through­out his­to­ry, icon­ic fig­ures like Pablo Picas­so have been fre­quent­ly tar­get­ed, with Picas­so him­self once wrong­ful­ly arrest­ed after the infa­mous theft of the *Mona Lisa* despite his own pri­or involve­ment in art mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion.

The chap­ter elab­o­rates on how promi­nent artists, includ­ing Sal­vador Dalí and Andy Warhol, fol­low in Picas­so’s wake con­cern­ing theft fre­quen­cy, though none reach his noto­ri­ous count. A sig­nif­i­cant law enforce­ment tri­umph is recount­ed with the recov­ery of 118 stolen Picas­sos in 1976, illus­trat­ing the growth and effec­tive­ness of spe­cial­ized art-police units world­wide. Var­i­ous coun­tries, par­tic­u­lar­ly Italy and France, have devel­oped skilled teams ded­i­cat­ed to com­bat­ing art crime, with Switzerland’s mod­est force still reflect­ing the grow­ing glob­al con­cern over artis­tic theft and the need for coor­di­nat­ed inter­na­tion­al efforts to tack­le the prob­lem.