Co-written by journalist Greg Campbell, author of “Blood Diamonds,’’ and Scott Andrew Selby, an attorney and diamond expert, “Flawless’’ offers a riveting narrative based on extensive research into the theft, including interviews with investigators, victims, and several of the perpetrators. Campbell and Selby reconstruct the crime, step by step, from its earliest planning stages to its execution and aftermath, plunging us headlong into the clandestine realm of the “School of Turin,’’ the network of allegedly mob-connected Italian criminals responsible for the robbery.
Following the exploits of the ring’s legman, Leonardo Notarbartolo, who cased the Diamond Center for two years by posing as a legitimate dealer in gems, we learn of the impressive security measures in place at the facility - round-the-clock guards, a vault with 18-inch-thick steel doors, multiple locks requiring separate keys and combinations, high-tech motion, vibration, and heat sensors - as well as the ingenious methods that the School of Turin devised to penetrate each successive layer of protection. Along the way, we are introduced to the history, structure, and customs of the international diamond trade and discover the vital role played in that industry by the City of Antwerp, where $50 billion worth of shimmering jewels change hands each year.
Campbell and Selby are particularly adept at drawing out the perverse symmetries that lie at the story’s heart: Just as a few careless oversights in the Diamond Center’s otherwise rigorous defenses allow the School of Turin to set its plans into motion, a series of uncharacteristically reckless blunders proves to be the thieves’ eventual, if only partial, undoing. The key conspirators are currently in prison, but the whereabouts of the loot remain a mystery.
