A rollicking true-crime experience in regards to a rogue who deals in rare birds and their eggs—and the wildlife detective determined to avoid him.

On May 3, 2010, an Irish nationwide named Jeffrey Lendrum was apprehended at Britain’s Birmingham International Airport with a dubious parcel strapped to his tummy. Inside had been fourteen rare peregrine falcon eggs snatched from a remote control cliffside in Wales.

So begins an account almost too bizarre to trust, following parallel lives of a globe-trotting on the subject of The Falcon Thief: A GENUINE Tale of Adventure, Treachery, and the Search for an ideal Bird smuggler who spent 2 decades capturing endangered raptors value millions of dollars as competition champions—and Detective Andy McWilliam from the United Kingdom’s National Wildlife Crime Device, who’s hell bent on protecting the world’s birds of prey.

The Falcon Thief whisks readers through the volcanoes of Patagonia to Zimbabwe’s Matobo National Park, and from your frigid tundra close to the Arctic Group to luxurious aviaries in the deserts of Dubai, all in search of a man who is reckless, arrogant, and gripped with a destructive compulsion to make the most beautiful creatures in nature his own. It’s a story that’s component true-crime narrative, part epic adventure—and wholly unputdownable before very last page.