Audiobook8 hours
The Falcon Thief: A True Tale of Adventure, Treachery, and the Hunt for the Perfect Bird
Written by Joshua Hammer
Narrated by Matthew Lloyd Davies
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5/5
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About this audiobook
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.
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.
Author
Joshua Hammer
Joshua Hammer is the New York Times bestselling author of The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu. He has written for The New York Times Magazine, GQ, Smithsonian, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, National Geographic, and Outside. He lives in Berlin.
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Reviews for The Falcon Thief
Rating: 4.382352941176471 out of 5 stars
4.5/5
34 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Really fascinating. The subject of this book is a nature lover and also an adventure seeker that would use a grappling hook to climb trees to Rob nests of Rare falcon eggs whose hearts beats are said to beat as fast as 600 bpm. Then he would smuggle the eggs to places like Dubai where wealthy sheiks would pay him a fortune for prized wild raptors. He was pursued and caught several times on different continents and is now in jail. Both he and the investigator sent to pursue him are avid bird lovers with very different perceptions on the preservation of nature.
2 people found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Thrilling journalism. What a story and how meticulously put together and skillfully told. The narrator of the audiobook also did justice to it!