The Napoleon of crime

Alternate Titles

• Life and times of Adam Worth, master thief

Description

The Victorian era's most infamous thief, Adam Worth was the original Napoleon of crime. Worth learned early that the best way to succeed was to steal. And steal he did. Following a strict code of honor, Worth won the respect of Victorian society. He also aroused its fear by becoming a chilling phantom, mingling undetected with the upper classes, whose valuables he brazenly stole. His most celebrated heist: Gainsborough's grand portrait of the Duchess of Devonshire--ancestor of Diana, Princess of Wales--a painting Worth adored and often slept with for twenty years.With a brilliant gang that included "Piano" Charley, a jewel thief, train robber, and playboy, and "the Scratch" Becker, master forger, Worth secretly ran operations from New York to London, Paris, and South Africa--until betrayal and a Pinkerton man finally brought him down. In a decadent age, Worth was an icon. His biography is a grand tour into the gaslit underworld of the last century. . . and into the doomed genius of a criminal mastermind.

First Sentence

On a Misty May midnight in a year 1876, three men emerged from a fashionable address in Piccadilly with top hats on their heads, money in their pockets, and burglary, on a grand scale, on their minds.

Subjects

Other Editions

• The Napoleon of crime: the life and times of Adam Worth, master thiefFarrar, Straus, Giroux1997-01-01
• Life and times of Adam Worth, master thiefFarrar, Straus, Giroux1997-01-01
• THE NAPOLEON OF CRIME.Harper Collins1997-01-01
• THE NAPOLEON OF CRIME.HardcoverHarper Collins1997-01-01
• The Napoleon of crimeHarperCollins Publishers1997-01-01
• The Napoleon of CrimeFlamingo1998-06-15