The Falcon Thief: A True Tale of Adventure, Treachery, and the Hunt for the Perfect Bird

Joshua Hammer

Feb 2020 · Sold by Simon and Schuster

About this eBook

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.

Ratings and reviews

true-crime, international-crime-and-mystery, endangered-species, historical-research, cultural-exploration First bird populations were murdered to near extinction by the devastating effects of DDT on bird populations and the environment (that's still going on but not as overtly). Now the biggest threat to bird populations are the targeted black market smugglers who are involved with serious theft of wild eggs from subarctic Canada, and the Middle East who utilize creative hiding places for smuggling eggs and have been known to receive as much as $400,000 for one gyrfalcon egg . Then there are the collectors of oology (the study and collection of eggs) with rare bird and rare bird egg obsessions. The narrative utilizes the work of a particular officer of the UK's National Wildlife Crime Unit and also a high profile smuggler who started out as an aficionado of wild raptors to infuse the book with historical and current information on the issues surrounding the falcons and the resurgence of obsession in the Emirates with falconry. This is an excellently researched book presented in a format that can be easily absorbed by everyone, even those who are not ordinarily drawn to nonfiction. I requested and received a free ebook copy from Simon and Schuster via NetGalley. Thank you!

About the author

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.