The Feather Thief

In a captivating true-crime narrative, "The Feather Thief" chronicles the astonishing 2009 heist perpetrated by twenty-year-old American flautist Edwin Rist. After a concert, Rist broke into the British Museum of Natural History's Tring branch, home to a vast ornithological collection, and stole hundreds of rare bird skins. These specimens, some collected by Alfred Russel Wallace, were coveted by a niche community of Victorian salmon fly-tiers, who valued their exquisite feathers above all else. The author, Kirk Wallace Johnson, stumbled upon this bizarre case years later while fly-fishing and became consumed by it. His relentless investigation leads him on a global quest to uncover the fate of the stolen skins and understand the motivations behind such an audacious crime. More than just a tale of theft, the book delves into the fascinating, often obsessive world of fly-tying, the complex history of natural history collections, and humanity's destructive impulse to possess and exploit nature's beauty.