He has been published in Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Magazine, and The Washington Post, among other publications.
Dolnick's book The Rescue Artist: A True Story of Art, Thieves, and the Hunt for a Missing Masterpiece (2005)—an account of the 1994 theft, and eventual recovery, of Edvard Munch's The Scream from Norway's National Gallery in Oslo—won the 2006 Edgar Award in the Best Crime Fact category.
His 2008 book, The Forger's Spell, describes the 1930-1940s forging of Johannes Vermeer paintings by a critic-detesting Dutch artist, accepted as "masterpieces" by art experts until the artist's confession and trial in 1945.
In 1973, he married Lynn Iphigene Golden in a Jewish ceremony in Marblehead, Massachusetts.
[1] Golden is the daughter of publisher Ruth Sulzberger Holmberg of the Ochs-Sulzberger family,[2][1] publishers of The New York Times, and is on the board of The New York Times Company.