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Kirk W. Johnson

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The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century Hardcover – April 24, 2018

by Kirk Wallace Johnson (Author)

4.3 4,405 ratings

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As heard on NPR's This American Life

“Absorbing . . . Though it's non-fiction, The Feather Thief contains many of the elements of a classic thriller.” —Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s Fresh Air

“One of the most peculiar and memorable true-crime books ever.” —Christian Science Monitor

A rollicking true-crime adventure and a captivating journey into an underground world of fanatical fly-tiers and plume peddlers, for readers of The Stranger in the Woods, The Lost City of Z, and The Orchid Thief.

On a cool June evening in 2009, after performing a concert at London's Royal Academy of Music, twenty-year-old American flautist Edwin Rist boarded a train for a suburban outpost of the British Museum of Natural History. Home to one of the largest ornithological collections in the world, the Tring museum was full of rare bird specimens whose gorgeous feathers were worth staggering amounts of money to the men who shared Edwin's obsession: the Victorian art of salmon fly-tying. Once inside the museum, the champion fly-tier grabbed hundreds of bird skins—some collected 150 years earlier by a contemporary of Darwin's, Alfred Russel Wallace, who'd risked everything to gather them—and escaped into the darkness.

Two years later, Kirk Wallace Johnson was waist high in a river in northern New Mexico when his fly-fishing guide told him about the heist. He was soon consumed by the strange case of the feather thief. What would possess a person to steal dead birds? Had Edwin paid the price for his crime? What became of the missing skins? In his search for answers, Johnson was catapulted into a years-long, worldwide investigation. The gripping story of a bizarre and shocking crime, and one man's relentless pursuit of justice, The Feather Thief is also a fascinating exploration of obsession, and man's destructive instinct to harvest the beauty of nature.

Print length

320 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Viking
Publication date

April 24, 2018
Dimensions

6.5 x 1.25 x 9.5 inches
ISBN-10

110198161X
ISBN-13

978-1101981610
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Popular Highlights in this book

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In the last three decades of the nineteenth century, hundreds of millions of birds were killed, not for museums but for another purpose altogether: women’s fashion.
Highlighted by 869 Kindle readers
Salmon don’t lunge at an angler’s fly because it resembles an insect: they attack it because it’s a foreign object in the place where they’ve just buried their eggs.
Highlighted by 756 Kindle readers
“This consideration,” he concluded, “must surely tell us that all living things were not made for man.”
Highlighted by 526 Kindle readers

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

An Amazon Best Book of May 2018: The title of The Feather Thief smartly echoes Susan Orleans' The Orchid Thief, and The Feather Thief has good reason to compare itself to such an admired book. Strange niches of history. Obsessives who refuse to adhere to the law. A writer who stumbles upon a story that becomes an obsession in its own right. All these elements combust to create Johnson's investigation into the theft of 299 rare bird skins from a British natural history museum. While bird skins might sound like (ahem) dry reading, Johnson knows just how to fascinate the reader, plunging with vigor into exotic bird exploration, the crackdown on rare bird trafficking, and the insular world of fly-tying enthusiasts, all of which lead, almost inevitably, to the theft from the Tring Museum. The most likely receivers of the stolen goods? Fly-tiers with an unquenchable thirst for feathers from blue chatterers, the resplendent quetzal, and birds of paradise so they can re-create outlandish Victorian-era salmon flies. Although the thief is caught, Johnson decides to investigate himself what happened to the 106 never-recovered bird skins, pulling the reader even deeper into the thief's bizarre world. Clever, informative, and sometimes endearingly bumbling, this mix of natural history and crime opens up new worlds. You'll never look at a stuffed bird the same way again. —Adrian Liang, Amazon Book Review

Review

“Fascinating . . . a complex tale of greed, deception, and ornithological sabotage.”
—The New York Times Book Review

“Fascinating from the first page to the last—you won’t be able to put it down.”
—Southern Living

“A fascinating book . . . the kind of intelligent reported account that alerts us to a threat and that, one hopes, will never itself be endangered.”
—The Wall Street Journal

“Thrilling . . . This book is The Orchid Thief for the fly-fishing and birding set.”
—Paris Review, “Staff Picks”

“Johnson, like Susan Orlean before him, is a magnifier: he sees grand themes—naïveté, jealousy, depression, the entitlement of man . . . That vision makes a book about things like Victorian salmon fly tiers feel heavy as gold.”
—The New Yorker, “What We’re Reading This Summer”

“[A] true-crime caper recounted with relish.”
—O, The Oprah Magazine, “10 Titles to Pick Up Now”

“Vivid and arresting . . . Johnson [is] a wonderfully assured writer.”
—The Times (London)

“One of the most peculiar and memorable true-crime books ever. . . . Johnson is an intrepid journalist . . . [with] a fine knack for uncovering details that reveal, captivate, and disturb.”
—Christian Science Monitor

“An uncommon book . . . [that] informs and enlightens. . . A heist story that manages to underline the enduring and continuing importance of natural history collections and their incredible value to science. We need more books like this one.”
—Science

“The best compliment I can give a nonfiction writer is that they make me care deeply about an obscure topic I would otherwise never have been interested in. That’s the case with Kirk Wallace Johnson’s The Feather Thief.”
—Eva Holland,Outside, “The Best Summer Books”

“A fascinating account of a bizarre crime . . . The Feather Thief is one of the more peculiar and gripping crime stories in recent memory.”
—LitHub CrimeReads, “The Essential True Crime Books of Spring 2018”

“Johnson succeeds in conveying the gravity of this natural-history 'heist of the century,' and one of The Feather Thief’s greatest strengths is the excitement, horror, and amazement it evokes. It’s nonfiction that reads like fiction, with plenty of surprising moments.”
—Outside

“A riveting read.”
—Nature

“A literary police sketch—part natural history yarn, part detective story, part the stuff of tragedy.”
—Smithsonian

“Within pages I was hooked. This is a weird and wonderful book . . . Johnson is a master of pacing and suspense . . . It’s a tribute to [his] storytelling gifts that when I turned the last page I felt bereft.” —Maggie Fergusson, The Spectator (London)

“A riveting story about mankind’s undeniable desire to own nature’s beauty and a spellbinding examination of obsession, greed, and justice . . .[told] in engrossing detail. . . . A gripping page-turner.”
—Bustle

“Enthralling.”
—HelloGiggles

“Richly informative, with handy illustrations, endlessly fascinating and crackingly entertaining, The Feather Thief is the kind of true-crime narrative that gives Erik Larson's much-lauded The Devil in the White City a run for the money.”
—Shelf Awareness

“Highly entertaining . . . journalism at its best . . . If you know nothing about fly-fishing or tying, it doesn’t matter, as long as you like a well-written story.”
—Karen Gallagher, The Baltimore Sun's Roughly Speaking podcast

“Reads like a whodunit . . . I could not put it down.”
—Tom Rosenbauer, The Orvis Fly Fishing Guide Podcast

“This is the type of book I absolutely love – one that takes a seemingly obscure topic and shines a brilliant and bizarre and endlessly fascinating light upon it. The crime itself is riveting, but Kirk Wallace Johnson’s portrayal of the crazy world of feather fanatics makes this an unforgettable read.”
—Michael Finkel, author of The Stranger in the Woods

“Captivating...Everything the author touches in this thoroughly engaging true-crime tale turns to storytelling gold. . . . Johnson's flair for telling an engrossing story is, like the beautiful birds he describes, exquisite. . . . A superb tale about obsession, nature, and man's ‘unrelenting desire to lay claim to its beauty, whatever the cost.’”
—Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review

“[An] enthralling account of a truly bizarre crime. . . . Johnson goes deep into the exotic bird and feather trade and concludes that though obsession and greed know no bounds, they certainly make for a fascinating tale. The result is a page-turner that will likely appeal to science, history, and true crime readers.”
—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

“A remarkably compelling story of obsession and history.”
—Booklist, Starred Review

“You'll never look at a feather the same way again after reading this riveting detective story . . . [The Feather Thief] brilliantly weaves together Alfred Russel Wallace, the surprisingly shadowy history of fly fishing, conservation and the plumage of the most beautiful birds on earth.”
—The Bookseller (UK)

“A true-crime tale that weaves seemingly unrelated threads—a museum break-in; the development of evolutionary theory; a case of post-Iraq PTSD; endangered birds; and (above all) the murky underworld of fly-tying obsessives—into a spellbinding narrative tapestry.”
—Mark Adams, author of Turn Right at Machu Picchu

“A captivating tale of an unlikely thief and his even more unlikely crime, and a meditation on obsession, greed, and the sheer fascination in something as seemingly simple as a feather.”
—Paul Collins, author of The Murder of the Century

“A stirring examination of the devastating effects of human greed on endangered birds, a powerful argument for protecting our environment—and, above all, a captivating crime story.”
—Peter Wohlleben, author of The Hidden Life of Trees

“This gem of a book, about a heist of archival birds, is marvelous, moving, and transcendent. I can’t stop thinking about it.”
—Dean King, author of Skeletons on the Zahara and The Feud

“This extraordinary bookexposes an international underground that traffics in rare and precious natural resources, yet was previously unknown to all but a few. A page-turning read you won’t soon forget, The Feather Thief tells us as much about our cultural priorities as it does about the crimes themselves. There’s never been anything like it.”
—Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, author of The Hidden Life of Dogs

About the Author

Kirk W. Johnson is the author of To Be a Friend Is Fatal and the founder of the List Project to Resettle Iraqi Allies. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times, among others. He is the recipient of fellowships from Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, the American Academy in Berlin, and the USC Annenberg Center.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

PROLOGUE

By the time Edwin Rist stepped off the train onto the platform at Tring, forty miles north of London, it was already quite late. The residents of the sleepy town had finished their suppers; the little ones were in bed. As he began the long walk into town, the Midland line glided off into darkness.

A few hours earlier Edwin had performed in the Royal Academy of Music’s “London Soundscapes,” a celebration of Hayden, Handel, and Mendelssohn. Before the concert, he’d packed a pair of latex gloves, a miniature LED flashlight, a wire cutter, and a diamond-blade glass cutter in a large rolling suitcase, and stowed it in his concert hall locker. He bore a passing resemblance to a lanky Pete Townshend: intense eyes, prominent nose, and a mop of hair, although instead of shredding a Fender, Edwin played the flute.

There was a new moon that evening, making the already-gloomy stretch of road even darker. For nearly an hour, he dragged his suit- case through the mud and gravel skirting the road, under gnarly old trees strangled with ivy. Turlhanger’s Wood slept to the north, Chestnut Wood to the south, fallow fields and the occasional copse in between.

A car blasted by, its headlights blinding. Adrenaline coursing, he knew he was getting close.

The entrance to the market town of Tring is guarded by a sixteenth-century pub called the Robin Hood. A few roads beyond, nestled between the old Tring Brewery and an HSBC branch, lies the entrance to Public Footpath 37. Known to locals as Bank Alley, the footpath isn’t more than eight feet wide and is framed by seven-foot-high brick walls.

Edwin slipped into the alley, into total darkness. He groped his way along until he was standing directly behind the building he’d spent months casing.

All that separated him from it was the wall. Capped with three rusted strands of barbed wire, it might have thwarted his plans were it not for the wire cutter. After clearing an opening, he lifted the suitcase to the ledge, hoisted himself up, and glanced anxiously about. No sign of the guard. There was a space of several feet between his perch on the wall and the building’s nearest window, forming a small ravine. If he fell, he could injure himself—or worse, make a clamor that would summon security. But he’d known this part wouldn’t be easy.

Crouched on top of the wall, he reached toward the window with the glass cutter and began to grind it along the pane. Cutting glass was harder than he had anticipated, though, and as he struggled to carve an opening, the glass cutter slipped from his hand and fell into the ravine. His mind raced. Was this a sign? He was think- ing about bailing on the whole crazy scheme when that voice, the one that had urged him onward these past months, shouted Wait a minute! You can’t give up now. You’ve come all this way!

He crawled back down and picked up a rock. Steadying himself atop the wall, he peered around in search of guards before bashing the window out, wedging his suitcase through the shard-strewn opening, and climbing into the British Natural History Museum.

Unaware that he had just tripped an alarm in the security guard’s office, Edwin pulled out the LED light, which cast a faint glow in front of him as he made his way down the hallways toward the vault, just as he’d rehearsed in his mind.

He wheeled his suitcase quietly through corridor after corridor, drawing ever closer to the most beautiful things he had ever seen. If he pulled this off, they would bring him fame, wealth, and prestige. They would solve his problems. He deserved them.

He entered the vault, its hundreds of large white steel cabinets standing in rows like sentries, and got to work. He pulled out the first drawer, catching a waft of mothballs. Quivering beneath his fingertips were a dozen Red-ruffed Fruitcrows, gathered by natural- ists and biologists over hundreds of years from the forests and jungles of South America and fastidiously preserved by generations of curators for the benefit of future research. Their coppery-orange feathers glimmered despite the faint light. Each bird, maybe a foot and a half from beak to tail, lay on its back in funerary repose, eye sockets filled with cotton, feet folded close against the body. Tied around their legs were biodata labels: faded, handwritten records of the date, altitude, latitude, and longitude of their capture, along with other vital details.

He unzipped the suitcase and began filling it with the birds, emptying one drawer after another. The occidentalis subspecies that he snatched by the handful had been gathered a century earlier from the Quindío Andes region of western Colombia. He didn’t know exactly how many he’d be able to fit into his suitcase, but he managed forty-seven of the museum’s forty-eight male specimens before wheeling his bag on to the next cabinet.

Down in the security office, the guard was fixated on a small television screen. Engrossed in a soccer match, he hadn’t yet noticed the alarm indicator blinking on a nearby panel.
Edwin opened the next cabinet to reveal dozens of Resplendent Quetzal skins gathered in the 1880s from the Chiriquí cloud forests of western Panama, a species now threatened by widespread deforestation and protected by international treaties. At nearly four feet in length, the birds were particularly difficult to stuff into his suitcase, but he maneuvered thirty-nine of them inside by gently curling their sweeping tails into tight coils.

Moving down the corridor, he swung open the doors of another cabinet, this one housing species of the Cotinga birds of South and Central America. He swiped fourteen one-hundred-year-old skins of the Lovely Cotinga, a small turquoise bird with a reddish-purple breast endemic to Central America, before relieving the museum of thirty-seven specimens of the Purple-breasted Cotinga, twenty-one skins of the Spangled Cotinga, and another ten skins of the endangered Banded Cotinga, of which as few as 250 mature individuals are estimated to be alive today.

The Galápagos island finches and mockingbirds gathered by Charles Darwin in 1835 during the voyage of the HMS Beagle—which had been instrumental in developing his theory of evolution through natural selection—were resting in nearby drawers. Among the museum’s most valuable holdings were skeletons and skins of extinct birds, including the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon, along with an elephant-folio edition of John James Audubon’s The Birds of America. Overall, the museum houses one of the world’s largest collection of ornithological specimens: 750,000 bird skins, 15,000 skeletons, 17,000 birds preserved in spirit, 4,000 nests, and 400,000 sets of eggs, gathered over the centuries from the world’s most remote forests, mountainsides, jungles, and swamps.

But Edwin hadn’t broken into the museum for a drab-colored finch. He had lost track of how long he’d been in the vault when he finally wheeled his suitcase to a stop before a large cabinet. A small plaque indicated its contents: paradisaeidae. Thirty-seven King Birds of Paradise, swiped in seconds. Twenty-four Magnificent Rifle-birds. Twelve Superb Birds of Paradise. Four Blue Birds of Paradise. Seventeen Flame Bowerbirds. These flawless specimens, gathered against almost impossible odds from virgin forests of New Guinea and the Malay Archipelago 150 years earlier, went into Edwin’s bag, their tags bearing the name of a self-taught naturalist whose breakthrough had given Darwin the scare of his life: a. r. wallace.

The guard glanced at the CCTV feed, an array of shots of the parking lot and the museum campus. He began his round, pacing the hallways, checking the doors, scanning for anything awry

Edwin had long since lost count of the number of birds that passed through his hands. He had originally planned to choose only the best of each species, but in the excitement of the plunder, he grabbed and stuffed until his suitcase could hold no more.

The guard stepped outside to begin a perimeter check, glancing up at the windows and beaming his flashlight on the section abutting the brick wall of Bank Alley.

Edwin stood before the broken window, now framed with shards of glass. So far everything had gone according to plan, with the exception of the missing glass cutter. All that remained was to climb back out of the window without slicing himself open, and melt into the anonymity of the street.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Viking; First Edition (April 24, 2018)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 110198161X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1101981610
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.25 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.5 x 1.25 x 9.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #150,551 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #4 in Museum Industry
- #17 in Museum Studies & Museology (Books)
- #306 in Bird Field Guides

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Kirk W. Johnson

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KIRK WALLACE JOHNSON is the author of The Fishermen and the Dragon: Fear, Greed, and a Fight for Justice on the Gulf Coast, The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century, and To Be a Friend is Fatal: the Fight to Save the Iraqis America Left Behind, covers his efforts on behalf of Iraqi refugees as the founder of the List Project to Resettle Iraqi Allies.

His work has appeared in The New Yorker, the New York Times, This American Life, and 60 Minutes.

As the founder of the List Project, Johnson’s advocacy led to the creation of a program for Iraqis that were imperiled as a consequence of working alongside U.S. diplomats and soldiers. His organization, which marshaled an army of pro bono attorneys to press their cases, helped nearly 2,500 Iraqi refugees reach America, where they are now citizens.

Prior to that, Johnson served in Iraq with the U.S. Agency for International Development in Baghdad and then Fallujah as the Agency’s first coordinator for reconstruction in the war-torn city.

He is a Senior Fellow at the USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership and Policy, and the recipient of fellowships from the American Academy in Berlin, Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, and the Wurlitzer Foundation. Prior to his work in Iraq, he conducted research on political Islamism as a Fulbright Scholar in Egypt. Johnson graduated from the University of Chicago in 2002.

He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, son, and daughter.

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suzy hallock-bannigan

The Value of Obsession

Reviewed in the United States on December 17, 2018

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I suspect it is no accident that Kirk Wallace Johnson has written this remarkable book which centers of the work of yet another Wallace—-A.R. Wallace stayed in the Malay Archipelago methodically capturing, separating, bagging and bottling specimens—-even all 39 birds of Paradise. He had plenty of time to think when he was wrapped in a blanket in 90 degree heat seating with malaria: what causes species to differentiate? Why do some endure and others do not? Deciding that with every generation change, inferior species would die off and superior ones would emerge with strength, Wallace should be remembered at least on an equal par with Charles Darwin. Perhaps the only difference is that Darwin was in London and had access to the press and Wallace did not. They did communicate by letter, but it was Wallace who bagged and boxed 310 mammals, 100, reptiles, 7,500 shells, 13,100 moths and butterflies, 83,200 beetles, and 13,400 other insects. But the greatest highlight of all his collection was for him the 8,050 birds he captured and shipped to his London agent. And while he was doing al that (over a period of about 8 years), in 1868 Walter Rothschild was born into a family credited with inventing modern banking and funding the Suez Canal. When he was four, his family moved to Tring Park with a mansion and 600 acres. When wee Walter discovers a construction worker-cum-taxidermist, Walter tells his parents that he wants to make a museum and Mr. Minall is going to help him look after it. When he was 21, his father built him that museum, realizing that his son had by that time collected 46,000 specimens. Senior Rothschild became disenchanted with son Walter and eventually cut his son out of his will, but Walter confessed to a family member that his father was right and that he, Walter, wasn’t good with money.
In addition to natural history entrepreneurs Wallace and Rothschild, women’s fashion began an obsession with exotic feathers sometimes attributed to Marie Antionette’s sticking a diamond-encrusted egret feather into her hair, and not till the late l800’s would this obsession with feathers would subside. Largely due to a more enlightened view that slaughtering birds for fashion was unkind, Mary Thatcher, Mary Williamson, and a couple of Bostonians, Harriet Lawrence Hemenway and Minna Hall gave teas and educated others about the cruelty of wearing features (later this became the beginning of the Audubon Society). Feathers in women’s hats declined, but feathers as salmon fly-tying art emerged with strength, and into this latter endeavor comes music student and home schooled graduate Edwin Rist. In October of 2007, Rist finds himself in London near the Natural History Museum and he posts his photos documenting his visit there on Facebook. His obsession brings him closer to the Bristol Fly Dressers’ Guild and found himself contemplating how “a life without tying is fairly harsh.” But, “having a fortune in feathers confiscated by customs would be worse.”
And so, the answer? A heist on the Tring Museum clearly. Author Kirk Wallace Johnson describes Rist’s initial visit to the Tring as akin to being in the vault at Fort Knox where gold buillion is stored: “At some point, the value becomes incomprehensible.” Rist photographed the Tring birds and fixed on the creative potential for fish fly work which he had been pursuing for five years. And the story of how he manages that and the subsequent web of feather and fly distribution and his capture is the tale of this book. Johnson is part detective, part historian, and a very able writer. I found myself thinking that Johnson had a deep and profound understanding of Rist because Johnson himself became obsessed. But his obsession was about the mystery which, it seemed to me, he had a primary role in solving. He’s an able writer, well published in the New Yorker, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. I look forward to his next work.

13 people found this helpful

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pamma

Would not have picked it up

Reviewed in the United States on March 16, 2024

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A fascinating book - I learned so much about the history of Wallace and his searching for birds in the 1800’s. Then more about fly fishing. And then about the thief of feathers and skins in England. And the court system in England. To be honest I could not put I down.

Reviewed in the United States on May 19, 2023

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‘The Feather Thief’ was such a unique and fascinating read. During the early part of the book,I found the history very interesting….but couldn’t figure out where it was leading…. It then became very interesting on so many scientific levels. Once the story changed to first person,it was so intriguing I couldn’t put it down. This book was read as the book of the month for my book group. I knew nothing about it beforehand, so it was a pleasant surprise. I have since spent time on the nternet on various URLs mentioned. So interesting and educational. Highly recommend.

3 people found this helpful

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Eric Lee Smith

Truman Capote Did Not Have This Problem

Reviewed in the United States on May 1, 2022

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“The Feather Thief” is a good book, well written, could have been great if only the facts had cooperated. This is a whodunit where the who is discovered after 125 pages or so, then the next 200 are a whydunit, and we don’t care all that much.

The author was active in first solving the crime and then in tracking down the thieves. He was much more involved than Truman Capote was in “In Cold Blood.” Capote though got his story, his narrative ended in hangings for the criminals, and thus his patience was rewarded. This author has much less luck with the story, it just won’t end cleanly and dramatically.

Both books move along briskly and use novel techniques to tell a non-fiction story. The settings and characters for both are unusual and compelling. Both authors get wrapped up in both their stories and the fate of their villans. Also for our feather criminals, they fail to deliver dramatic falls for themselves, leaving only a dramatic fail in their wake.

I give it four stars, could have been three, but I enjoyed the way the author told the first half of the story, had that continued it would have been five.

5 people found this helpful

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C. Simmons

fascinating

Reviewed in the United States on February 17, 2024

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What an absolutely fascinating & totally tragic tale. I had no idea there were people so obsessed with feathers. It seems ridiculous in 2024 that humans can still be so obsessive over such ridiculous things. Edward Rist is a symptom of a much larger problem, and probably a psycho. I’m truly sad he got away with it & lives his life without any problems from his heinous acts,

One person found this helpful

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bill greene

A totally engrossing and meticulously researched true story of one of the most bizarre crimes

Reviewed in the United States on July 2, 2018

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Summary: an engrossing and obsessive book about a true crime involving stealing hundreds of priceless dead birds.

The good: meticulously researched and extremely well written. I could not put this book down and will have a difficult time getting it out of my head. Very intriguing and very informative. This is an area I knew nothing about and found myself continuously looking up people, facts, and other details from this book. Interesting characters, quick plot, an absolutely bizarre crime, and meticulous research all make this book great.

The bad: the first 150 pages are very fast paced and filled with background information leading up the verdict of them crime and then changes pace dramatically. The last part of the book were not as intense and a bit slower overall. It also felt like there was no real conclusion. Though that is the case and this is all true, I wish there was some follow up or at least a summary to tie everything together. It seemed to end quite abruptly.

Overall: recommend this to all. A totally engrossing and meticulously researched true story of one of the most bizarre crimes I have ever heard of. Loved it.

6 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Louise Boyer

A must-read for all bird lovers.

Reviewed in Canada on July 7, 2018

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A fascinating true story that reads like a mystery novel and is part of the history of bird's extinction and survival through adversity. Absolutely mesmerizing! A must for all bird lovers.

One person found this helpful

Suren kimidi

Amusing

Reviewed in India on May 26, 2019

Verified Purchase

The hidden world of fly-tying is disclosed.
Interesting right from the start.
Author takes you to a tour of all the exotic birds in the world.

Amazon Customer

Addicting and outrageous

Reviewed in Japan on January 11, 2024

Verified Purchase

A fascinating, addicting story. An excellent read

Dr. R. G. Henderson

A bizarre but brilliant book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 8, 2018

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This is an unusual but fascinating book and a great read. Two obsessives are involved - the thief of the title and the author. It tells the story of Edwin Rist, a talented flautist and student at the Royal Academy of Music. But Rist was also an obsessive (and very good) fishing fly tier. We are introduced to an extraordinary underworld of the fly tying community as well as tangential background about 19th century pioneers who collected tropical bird skins and the Victorian fascination with exotic bird feathers for fashion (largely hats). Classic trout and salmon flies require feathers - particularly exotic tropical bird feathers. Such feathers command high prices on eBay and fly tying forums, although many of these belong to protected species and cannot legally be traded.

In Tring (of all places) there is the ornithological collection of the Natural History Museum. Rist by subterfuge arranged a visit there and then planned a daring crime. After a concert he gathered together his tools - latex gloves, glass cutter (purchased from Amazon) etc and got the train from Euston to Tring. He climbed a wall, smashed a window and found himself in Aladdin’s cave. He managed to get a wheelie suitcase in the window and stuffed it with literally hundreds of exotic colourful bird skins with their feathers. He managed to get out with this haul and got the train back to London. For a month he made thousands (ostensibly to buy a new flute) selling feathers and complete bird skins to the fly tying internet community. After a month or so a prospective purchaser was suspicious and contacted the police. When the police called on Rist he immediately confessed, handed over his remaining bird skins and was arrested. As he had confessed, and the facts were not in dispute, all the court had to decide was the sentence. In due course the judge gave him a twelve month sentence - suspended because of his Asperger’s.

Our author is the second obsessive. He was an American veteran of the Iraq war who had PTSD. As part of his therapy he tried fly fishing. Whilst fishing in New Mexico his tutor told him the story of Rist. He was fascinated by this and determined to find out more. The result is this book. He eventually tracked down Rist and had an interview with him. We are left to doubt whether he ever did have Asperger’s. He seemed to know the answers to give the psychologist to get the diagnosis! Johnson was also obsessed with tracking down the hundred or so skins which were still missing. Here he had limited success but he did meet several people who (although perhaps not co-conspirators) were also involved in the heist. This is in many ways a bizarre book but is well written and a great quick read. Enjoy!

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Fabulous read

Reviewed in Australia on April 16, 2021

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Loved this book . It was so interesting and based on a true story that was truly amazing . You will learn a lot from this fascinating story . Highly recommend

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The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century Hardcover – April 24, 2018

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