THE FEATHER THIEF: Beauty, obsession, and the natural history heist of the century. By Kirk Wallace Johnson.

2018 1st US edition (reprint). 8vo (160 x 235mm). Ppxii,308. Colour and b/w photograph plates, bibliography. Blue/purple paper-covered boards, spine titled in blue.

In 2009 Edwin Rist was a music student and exceedingly enthusiastic fly-tyer. His enthusiasm for his calling extended to walking out of the Tring Museum with 299 exotic bird skins in a suitcase. Rist had talked his way into the confidence of the staff and spent several months familiarising himself with the layout and organisation of the museum in order to commit his crime. The bird skins came to the museum orginally as a result of decades of effort by Victorian natural history collectors, including even Alfred Russell Wallace, and the species stolen included a number which are now endangered or extinct. Most of the skins were eventually recovered by the police after Rist had offered many of the individual feathers for sale to fly-tyers on the internet. Kirk W. Johnson "was waist-deep in a river in New Mexico when his fly-fishing guide first told him about the heist. When he discovered that the thief evaded prison, and that many of the birds were never recovered, Johnson embarked upon an international investigation which led him deep into the fiercely secretive underground community obsessed with the Victorian art of salmon fly-tying." Besides very thoroughly unravelling the whole story of Rist's nefarious activities, Johnson also recovered many of the unaccounted for skins and interviewed many of the more and less peripheral characters in the story. A ripping yarn with scientific footnotes - a great read with much of interest to the fly-tyer.