The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century

After playing a performance at London's Royal Academy of Music, twenty-year-old American flautist Edwin Rist took a train to a suburban branch of the British Museum of Natural History one chilly June evening in 2009. The Tring museum, which housed one of the world's greatest ornithological collections, was brimming with rare bird species, the exquisite feathers of which fetches enormous sums of money to men who share Edwin's love with the Victorian craft of salmon fly-tying. Entering the museum, the champion fly-tier seized hundreds of bird skins, some of which had been gathered 150 years before by Darwin's contemporary Alfred Russel Wallace, who had sacrificed everything to get them, before making his getaway into the night.

Kirk Wallace Johnson learned of the crime two years later while standing waist deep on a northern New Mexico river with his fly-fishing guide. The peculiar case of the feather thief rapidly absorbed him. For what reason would someone take dead birds? Had Edwin made amends for his transgression? How did the missing skins end up? Johnson's quest for information propelled him into a multi-year, international inquiry. The Feather Thief is a compelling tale of a strange and horrifying murder, one man's unwavering quest for justice, and a fascinating examination of obsession and humanity's terrible tendency to take advantage of nature's beauty.