Edward Dolnick, author of "The Forger's Spell: A True Story of Vermeer, Nazis, and the Greatest Art Hoax of the Twentieth Century," poses in this undated handout photo

Dutch painter Han van Meegeren skipped the starving artist routine, making $3 million worth of sales in the 1930s and '40s (that would be $30 million today) despite art critics' consensus that he was a no-talent fop, a maker of cloying and derivative images.

Still, van Meegeren won over museum curators, art historians, collectors and even the art-obsessed No. 2 Nazi, Hermann Goering. He achieved this not under his own name but with work he passed off as the creation of celebrated 17th-century painter Johannes Vermeer, a hoax laid bare by Edward Dolnick in ``The Forger's Spell.''

He bought an oven ``large enough to swallow up a painting,'' Dolnick writes, and began baking canvases, trying to achieve an aged surface. Dolnick, formerly the chief science writer for the Boston Globe, takes the reader on a fascinating tour of the forger's studio. (His previous book, ``The Rescue Artist,'' chronicled the theft of Edvard Munch's painting ``The Scream.'')

Van Meegeren used middlemen to peddle fake Vermeers over the course of a few years, convincing well-connected acquaintances to sell the canvases on behalf of fictional families in need of funds. The well-paid middlemen asked few questions.

Vermeer only completed 35 or 36 canvases before dying in 1675. Yet the forger's choice was inspired, Dolnick says. In wartime Holland, collectors and curators craved Vermeers of their own, creating a ready pool of suckers.

``Buyers want to believe they have found something extraordinary; the forger's task is to find ways to bolster that belief,'' Dolnick says.

National Treasure

Van Meegeren's freshman effort, ``Christ at Emmaus,'' sold in 1937 to the esteemed Boymans Museum in Rotterdam for the equivalent of $3.9 million today. Hailed as a rediscovered national treasure, the fake Vermeer was anointed the star of a major Dutch exhibition.

There have been other books on van Meegeren, but Dolnick advances the story by asserting that his fakes were so crummy that anyone -- art connoisseur or not -- should have been able to tell the difference. Dolnick provocatively asks, ``How did experts go so wrong?''

To the modern eye, the figures in van Meegeren's faux Vermeers appear stiff, awkward and sickly, nothing like the subtle, sumptuous images -- that ethereal ``Girl With a Pearl Earring,'' for instance -- which made Vermeer famous. Dolnick weaves together a web of fascinating theories, drawn from science, psychology and human nature, to explain how so many people were fooled.

Hermann Goering, Collector

Part of the answer depended on the egotistic Dutch art authorities -- wealthy gentleman scholars who mostly lacked formal credentials but believed their ``eyes'' were infallible.

Another crucial ingredient was the bizarre art fixation of the Nazi collectors. Dolnick devotes chapters to the eccentric and flamboyant Goering, a ``perfumed monster'' who favored jeweled rings, fur coats and, most of all, art. Goering went on art shopping binges, competing with Hitler in a race to pillage the finest treasures.

``For the Reich Marshal, `Vermeer' was a brand name even better than `Rolls-Royce' or `the Ritz,''' Dolnick writes.

In 1937, Goering's art scout came across a newly discovered ``Vermeer'' -- actually a van Meegeren -- ``Christ With the Woman Taken in Adultery.'' Despite the fact that it looked nothing like most Vermeers, it was taken to be authentic and priced at 2 million Dutch gilders, $10 million today. Goering hemmed and hawed, finally trading 137 other artworks for his dubious prize.

Especially fascinating are Dolnick's descriptions of the European wartime art market. While in the U.S. dealers struggled to make sales, Goering and Hitler sparked a mini-boom in art stolen from murdered Jews. They had ``endless reserves of cash'' and bought fast.

``All the wheeling-and-dealing went on at hyperspeed,'' Dolnick writes. ``For a con man in the art line, times like these would never come again.''

``The Forger's Spell: A True Story of Vermeer, Nazis and the Greatest Art Hoax of the Twentieth Century'' is published by Harper (349 pages, $26.95). Another book about van Meegeren, ``The Man Who Made Vermeers'' by Jonathan Lopez, will be published by Harcourt on Aug. 21.