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A BON VIVANT TO CATCH D allas has always been a city filled with drama — or rather, characters who epitomize the dramatic. Case in point: o u r n a m e s a k e '80s series that chronicled the wealthy residents of Southfork Ranch. So, it's no surprise that perhaps the most notorious jewel thief in U.S. history concentrated on a very specific local neighborhood: a one-mile radius within Highland Park and Old Preston Hollow. The nameless perpetrator has been the topic of discussion at oh-so many cocktail parties and charity lunches of late, due to the new book The King of Diamonds: The Search for the Elusive Texas Jewel Thief (Simon & Schuster). Written by Rena Pederson, former VP and editorial page editor at The Dallas Morning News, the book has tongues wagging about its protagonist: an elusive thief who confounded the law by pilfering precious gems from our toniest neighborhoods for two decades (the mid-century ones, the '50s and '60s) until the spree suddenly stopped in 1970. The thief was never caught, but Pederson, the Dallas police, and the FBI all speculate that it was a well- heeled man that knew the playing field and the players. Whoever he was, he seems to have stolen the playbook from dashing burglar Cary Grant in the Hitchcock classic To Catch a Thief. Pederson offers up a few suspects — and, in fact, many Dallasites who remember the headlines glamorizing the jewel thief's exploits have their own theories. When I recently toured George Cameron Nash's re-envisioned showroom in the Dallas Design District, he had a theory about the King of Diamonds — he suspects a friend of a friend who was a frequent escort for debs at the myriad over-the-top balls of the time. In the book, Pederson describes herself The Page-Turner King of Diamonds Book That's Keeping Dallas' Wealthy Awake at Night By Billy Fong paints a vivid picture of Dallas' heyday of oil barons and the flamboyant rich. It was an era of change: After Eisenhower's two terms in office, we slipped into Camelot with JFK and Jackie, Sputnik, war and the subsequent protests, and Janis Joplin chronicling the times with her iconic lyrics. Dallas was a city filled with over-the-top denizens who gambled at lunch. (Yes, Pederson says, you could place a bet over lunch at the Dallas Athletic Club in those days.) Characters that seemed straight out of a salacious work of fiction were actual Dallas personalities: a stripper with an adopted name that fit her chosen profession, Candy Barr; the heiress whose wealth was on par with Queen Elizabeth, Margaret Hunt Hill; and the grand dame of the society circuit, Nancy Hamon (for whom a wing of the Dallas Museum of Art is named), who would throw soirées of epic proportions, with sets straight out of a Cecil B. DeMille film. She arrived at one, Pederson notes, "carried on a litter by four bare- chested men and wore a purple satin turban." Then there were gumshoes from local law enforcement, such as the broad-shouldered, imposingly tall Paul McCaghren, whom Pederson describes as having "a nose for larceny." As she points out, Dallas at that time had "plenty of larceny around." A conservative list of jewel heists attributed to the King includes the palatial homes of Margaret Hunt Hill; Jim Ling; Herman Lay of Lay's potato chips; Bruno and Josephine Graf on Park Lane; Wofford and Effie Cain in Highland Park; Feliz Doran; Joanne Herbert Stroud and Ethan Stroud on Miron Drive in Preston Hollow; Mr. and Mrs. J.B. Orand on Turtle as "fresh out of grad school … and starting work at United Press International … long blond hair and a sunny sense of possibility." She was skimming through the dispatches on the clunky teletype machines in 1970 and found one that gave the thief a catchy nickname: the King of Diamonds. Hence, the title of her book, in which Pederson 56