Flawless: Inside the Largest Diamond Heist in History

Flawless: Inside the Largest Diamond Heist in History is an account of the 2003 robbery of the Diamond Center building in Antwerp. It was the largest jewel heist in history and, most likely, the largest robbery of any sort ever committed. Experts estimate that as much as $500 million in diamonds, cash, gold and other precious items was stolen when thieves broke into a state of the art -- and supposedly impregnable -- vault in the basement of a heavily secured building in Antwerp's famed Diamond District.

To accomplish this theft, the thieves had to enter the building undetected (a difficult task in one of the world's most heavily monitored and policed neighborhoods), open the vault and the safe-deposit boxes within, then escape unnoticed with many pounds of equipment and loot. Police apprehended some of the suspected thieves -- members of a ring of jewel thieves from Turin -- but the stolen materials were never recovered.

Flawless reads a bit like a thriller and a spy novel combined and I would recommend it to anyone interested in crime writing, whether it be fiction or non-fiction.

-Paul