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Title details for The Falcon Thief by Joshua Hammer - Available

The Falcon Thief

A True Tale of Adventure, Treachery, and the Hunt for the Perfect Bird

by Joshua Hammer
Matthew Lloyd Davies
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available
A rollicking true-crime adventure about a rogue who trades in rare birds and their eggs—and the wildlife detective determined to stop him.
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.

  • Creators

  • Series

    A Wild True Crime Adventure

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    February 11, 2020

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781797103440
      • File size: 241641 KB
      • Duration: 08:23:25

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Narrator Matthew Lloyd Davies infuses this story of rare-egg theft with all the tension and excitement it deserves. In 2010, a man carrying 14 peregrine falcon eggs was detained at a British airport. This audiobook brings to light Jeffrey Lendrum's career as a smuggler of wild bird eggs destined for rich clients in the Middle East, where falcon racing is popular, especially among the very wealthy. Davies expertly matches his tone to the material, which ranges from breathless adventure, as Lendrum scales cliffs seeking aeries, to the tamer but still fascinating history of falconry, oology, and egg collectors. With perfect pacing, Davies brings every aspect of this exotic story to life: Lendrum himself, the detective who helped convict him, and the underworld of wildlife crime. L.S. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      December 23, 2019
      Hammer (The Badass-Librarians of Timbuktu), a contributing writer to Smithsonian magazine, delivers a vivid tale of obsession and international derring-do. The book opens in 2010 at the U.K.’s Birmingham International Airport, where Jeffrey Lendrum was discovered with 14 bird eggs hidden in socks tied around his abdomen. Airport security alerted the National Wildlife Crime Unit, whose dedicated senior investigator, Andy McWilliam, suspected Lendrum of involvement with the black market for birds of prey, one driven by demand on the Arabian Peninsula. There Hammer pauses the modern-day narrative and takes readers back in time for a digressive, bird-centric journey, from falconry’s millennia-old roots in the Middle East, to Lendrum’s 2001 bird egg hunt across the frozen tundra of northern Quebec, a key moment in his long smuggling career. Hammer also checks in on the ill-gotten collections of several other underground egg collectors, before weaving all the narrative strands back to Birmingham. Lendrum’s penchant for filming his exploits meant building a case against him wasn’t difficult, and by the conclusion, it’s almost beside the point. The book’s ultimate concern isn’t with the legal case, but with understanding the roots of Lendrum’s fixation on falcons, and it’s here where Hammer arguably falls short. Nonetheless, this swashbuckling account should hold its audience rapt until the very end.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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