Dear Ann Landers: How should I ask the thief who stole my teaching copy of THE GREAT GATSBY to return it after keeping it for nearly 40 years?

I have not needed it much in recent years, though I knew where it was. I had minutely analyzed the book and had written out elaborate arguments on interleaved sheets of paper. Now I could never recover all I wrote, although some of the essence of it is in a page I published in a 1981 issue of STUDIES IN AMERICAN FICTION (the whole article reprinted in a nearly inaccessible ECDOTICA 6 [2009]). The thief was not intelligent enough to follow the arguments perfectly, but good enough, good enough, unless you know what was being copied from.  Is there an acceptable way of asking for the return of a book on which the thief began what turned out to be an illustrious career?
Signed,
Wondering
Ann, I am writing you because this was in your time.