Filippo Bernardini

It was the stuff of novels: For years, a con artist plagued the publishing industry, impersonating editors and agents to pull off hundreds of literary heists. But the manuscripts obtained from high-profile authors were never resold or leaked, rendering the thefts all the more perplexing.

An Italian man admitted on Jan. 6 to stealing more than 1,000 unpublished manuscripts, including from distinguished authors, solving a mystery that had rocked the literary world for years.