'Angelico's Thief' Offers a Catholic Reading Adventure

"Angelico's Thief," a spirited adventure story with spiritual undertones, is now available at Amazon Kindle eBooks. Many Umbria visitors are familiar with the works of author John Litwinovich, who has written extensively about Assisi and its environs. In "Angelico's Thief" he takes readers on an intriguing chase involving art thefts, international law enforcement, organized crime and a Fifteenth Century Florentine artist with much insight into hope and love.

Here is a brief synopsis of "Angelico's Thief": Paul O'Connor, a brilliant and creative scholar, showed no signs of being suicidal. His leap from a California ocean cliff shocked those close to him. They mourned without closure as authorities failed to recover his body.

Someone is stealing fine art, recovering lost masterpieces and sending them to museums on two continents. A flood of publicity ignites interest in the art and in the crimes. Soon a treacherously competitive pursuit is underway, with law enforcement and criminal victims vying to discover and capture or kill the person responsible.

In the Umbrian town of Assisi, a man sits contemplating two missing works by an early Renaissance master, Fra Angelico, weighing the existence of good and evil, secular and divine, transitory and eternal.

In Los Angeles Ann Tomei, a doctoral student, receives a letter from Italy shedding light on the fate of Paul O'Connor and on the motives behind the art thefts. Unwittingly, she holds the key in the pursuit of the world's most wanted art thief. With her own life in danger, will she hasten the thief's downfall, or prove to be his saving grace?