The falcon thief a true tale of adventure, treachery, and the hunt for the perfect bird

On May 3, 2010, an Irish national named Jeffrey Lendrum was apprehended at Britain's Birmingham International Airport with a suspicious parcel strapped to his stomach. Inside were fourteen rare peregrine falcon eggs snatched from a remote cliffside in Wales. So begins a tale almost too bizarre...

Full description

Main Author: Hammer, Joshua, 1957- (Author)
Format: Books Print Book
Language: English
Published: New York : Simon & Schuster, 2020.
Subjects:
Summary: On May 3, 2010, an Irish national named Jeffrey Lendrum was apprehended at Britain's Birmingham International Airport with a suspicious parcel strapped to his stomach. Inside were fourteen rare peregrine falcon eggs snatched from a remote cliffside in Wales. So begins a tale almost too bizarre to believe, following the parallel lives of a globe-trotting smuggler who spent two decades capturing endangered raptors worth millions of dollars as race champions-and Detective Andy McWilliam of the United Kingdom's National Wildlife Crime Unit, who's hell bent on protecting the world's birds of prey. The Falcon Thief whisks readers from the volcanoes of Patagonia to Zimbabwe's Matobo National Park, and from the frigid tundra near the Arctic Circle to luxurious aviaries in the deserts of Dubai, all in pursuit of a man who is reckless, arrogant, and gripped by a destructive compulsion to make the most beautiful creatures in nature his own. It's a story that's part true-crime narrative, part epic adventure-and wholly unputdownable until the very last page.
Physical Description: xiv, 317 pages ; 23 cm
Bibliography: Includes bibliographical references (pages 283-301) and index.
ISBN: 9781501191886
1501191888
Author Notes: Joshua Hammer is the New York Times bestselling author of six books, including The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu and The Mesopotamian Riddle . His writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine , GQ , The Atlantic , The New Yorker , National Geographic , Smithsonian , and Outside . He lives in Berlin.