Almost immediately Irish police knew Dublin gangster Martin Cahill pulled off a famous art heist in 1986. Yet the stolen paintings - which included a Goya, a Vermeer and two works by Rubens - could not be located for years, even as Cahill taunted the police. But as journalist Mathew Hart shows in "The Irish Game," Cahill would eventually be sunk. It was the art theft which ultimately led to Cahill's assassination by the IRA. "The Irish Game" links this crime with two other world-famous thefts, of a Vermeer from the Gardner Museum in Boston, and of Edvard Munch's "The Scream" from the National Gallery in Oslo. "The Irish Game" is that rare thing: a book which is smart about Ireland, art and crime. ($24 / 240 pages / Walker & Company)