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The Island of Lost Maps
by Miles Harvey

Sometimes I wonder if all of us who travel often are obsessed with maps. Or, perhaps a map obsession has made us frequent travelers. Whatever the causality, it seems that most of the wanderers that I know are fascinated, if not obsessed, by maps.

The Island of Lost Maps is a story that draws in the reader and does not let go. The author unfolds the story of Gilbert Bland, a map thief, as if he were unfolding a map, side by side, layer by layer. Even the end of the book does not signal the end of the story, because it is a story without end. Perhaps the incarceration of the map thief, Gilbert Bland, is the technical end of the story but not the true end. There is too much that we do not know about this map thief. Why does he steal valuable, antique maps? Is it the theft or the possession that gives him satisfaction? Has he left our galaxy and entered the realms that are pictured on the maps?

I loved this book, not just because of my fascination with maps, but because this is not a book with all of the loose ends tied up at the end of the story. The author, and thus the reader, never really understands why the thief steals the valuable maps, what his motivation is. What satisfaction do the maps bring to him, why does he need to possess them?

What we are given some insight into is the closed, parochial world of map collecting. Some of the collectors profiled in this book appear to be just this side of criminals; there is a vague sense of marginal law breaking in some of their behavior.

The libraries' behavior, too, is puzzling. They surely must bear some of the blame for covering up the thief's series of map thefts. Even those libraries that discovered that some of their maps had been stolen chose not to report the thefts to the authorities. Other libraries never even discovered the thefts until notified by authorities that one of their maps had been found in the thief's possession.

Gilbert Bland spent only seventeen months in prison for his thefts. Most libraries in this country failed to press for a longer sentence or indictments on additional charges. Canadian libraries, from whom he stole forty maps, never even tried to indict and prosecute. Yet, the impact of his thefts persists, and at least one institution is pursuing the return of its property. An eerie post on the author's web site queries: "Gilbert Bland has been unfortunately recorded as a user of the French National Library in the past 2 years where he damaged some rare atlases. As a curator, I still hope to recover a few maps. Do you have information about the last location of this man and the way we could proceed?"

The Island of Lost Maps: A True Story of Cartographic Crime

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