Don’t get me wrong. From the perspective of the security professional — from the protective services and security system guys to the corrective action and investigative folks — this is a valuable book in ways beyond its considerable entertainment value. And for the bad guys, it’s not so much a “how-to” as a “how-not-to” manual.

"Flawless: Inside the Largest Diamond Heist in History" was written by Scott Andrew Selby, a diamond expert, and Greg Campbell, a journalist with a previous book credit about conflict, or “blood,” diamonds. Neither is really a security professional, but the circumstances of the heist forced them to examine not only the physical security set-up at the beginning, but also the role of security in the resulting investigation.

The “star” of the book is Leonardo Notarbartolo, on whom most of the narrative focuses. He was a member of a gang, the “School of Turin,” who rented an office in Antwerp’s diamond district. From there, over the course of about two years, he surveyed the security measures and — mostly bad — habits of the security and management teams.

He learned the vault’s three-ton door was secured by a special key, as well as a combination. The key was kept in an insecure closet near the vault. The combination? Investigators surmise that, for the sake of expedience, the dial was never re-spun to scatter the tumblers. In effect, gems worth hundreds of millions were kept in an unlocked storeroom.

That makes it sound worse than, perhaps, it was. Measures respecting the principles of defence-in-depth and layering were in place, but weren’t effective. The safety deposit boxes inside the vault had plastic components, alarms were ultimately easily bypassed, technology was out of date, etc.

Sound familiar? As is often the case, security funding and training were not in line with the value of the assets they were intended to protect. Would things have been different in Paris, recently the site of a major art theft facilitated in part by unaddressed deficiencies in the museum’s alarm system, if someone who signs security procurement requests had read this book?