It's one thing having to track down missing items: it's quite another having to locate the people those items have been stolen from. Strange and impossible as it may seem, many major libraries have had valuable antique maps stolen without even noticing their loss. Most high-speed car chases would have to concede that this book has far more to offer when it comes to twists, turns and offbeat dead ends than any race through city streets.
Readers who are interested in maps will understand how a book such as this will exert an indefinable attraction. As a map-obsessive, be they beautifully-coloured antiques complete with sea serpents and fantastical creatures, National Geographic specials or ordnance survey charts at their most functional, I read The Island of Lost Maps at one sitting. Fellow map-lovers or fans of thrillers without blood probably will as well.
The main plot - that of the pursuit of the aptly-named Gilbert Bland, a map thief of unusual daring and staggering dullness - is as interesting as any hunt. But even more fascinating are the digressions, such as his asking "how big is the world? For anyone interested in mapmaking that question is about as fundamental as they come. The first person to make a scientific measurement of the earth's circumference, however, was not a cartographer but a librarian. His name was Eratosthenes (sic), and, from about 235 BC until about 195 BC, he was head of the library at Alexandria . . . "
Harvey has assembled a multi-layered story and pulls all the bits, facts and details together with tremendous energy and relentless research. While he has a weakness for scene-stealing and wants to share too many of his own experiences and motivations with his reader, his exuberance is almost forgivable. Harvey's tabloid, gushy, confessional prose may at times leave you cringing, as will his game-show host tone - but for a book that grew out of a magazine article, it certainly is a story and a half.
It begins with Harvey confirming from the opening pages his determination to share equal billing with his story. "I am neither a map scholar nor a map collector, but if there's one thing I should make clear about myself from the start it's that I am an incorrigible mapperist, an ecstatic contemplator of things cartographic." Very early on I suspected there would be a lot I would like about this book, and a lot I wouldn't - and this hunch was right. Still, Harvey's excitement does draw the reader in. Even more compelling, though, are the anecdotes about the great adventurers who used these maps, at times stolen, invariably fought over.
Map thieves populate Europe's history of exploration - such as the Houtman brothers, Dutch navigators who were commissioned by nine Amsterdam traders to travel to Portugal to discover what they could about the newly-developed sea routes to the East Indies. It sounds straightforward enough until you read on, to learn they were arrested in Portugal for attempting to acquire classified Portuguese navigational charts detailing the sailing routes to the Indies. Before long we are considering the achievement of Gerard Mercator, the Dutch cartographer and a contemporary of the Houtmans. As early as the 15th century maps had become as vital to business as they were to adventure. Harvey considers the Dutch, and how that country ousted the Portuguese to "become the dominant colonial power in the south-western Pacific. They controlled the region for more than three hundred years - an entire empire built on getting one's hands on the right maps". We see cartography developing from an art based on chance to an exact science. While he ponders maps from the earliest times and geniuses from the second-century Greek Ptolemy to the great Abraham Ortelius to the grid-like, photographic street mapping of today, he never loses sight of the men who made them, and more importantly the men who coveted them.
Greed and money are central characters in the narrative. Scholarship is quickly overshadowed by the reality of present-day map dealing. Wealthy patrons are prepared to pay vast sums of money for antique maps "because they look good on the wall". In true reporter style Harvey digs around for an insider capable of - and willing to - unravel the mysteries of the map business. He produces the larger-than-life W. Graham Arader III, a map millionaire despised by his rivals and other lesser mortals.
Arader knows the business inside out. Some of the realities are harsh. Librarians don't like admitting they don't look at the maps. The police, who would rather track real criminals, don't get too excited about stolen bits of paper which libraries don't even know are missing. Even more shocking is the ease with which map thieves can razor-blade a map out of a book. Maps are far more vulnerable than books; they are also easier to sell as they are far more difficult to source. Harvey repeatedly discovers incidents involving sloppy security.
Through Arader, Harvey experiences the tension of the auction rooms. He also learns that whereas previously atlases were constantly being "broken up" and maps sold separately, this practice has declined as complete atlases with undamaged maps are fetching art auction prices. Whatever about some of the collectors he meets, who give the impression they are passionate about maps, Gilbert Bland the map thief turns out to be a man with no interest in maps aside from a quick way of paying his many debts. Harvey is tenacious and won't give up. He is also very keen on psychoanalysing everyone he meets - including himself - but particularly Bland whose personality and past are examined with terrifying thoroughness.
This is a lively, jumpy, at times even self-congratulatory and journalistic book - Harvey does not conceal his joy at being a writer. It can irritate, but it never lags and you do find yourself hoping you'll meet the elusive Bland. There are also unexpected moments, such as observing Christopher Columbus, a man obsessed by sea charts. "A cartographer and dealer himself, Columbus drew maps, dreamed maps, meditated upon maps, listened to maps, acquired them at every opportunity (sometimes under very questionable circumstances). Even in 1492, after sailing into the unknown, far past the point where maps would be of any practical use to him, he continued to pore over them . . . "
Above all, this study in "who took it and why" is a celebration of maps and the men who made them - as well as the imaginations and lusts they inspired.
Eileen Battersby is Literary Correspondent of The Irish Times
