The Feather Thief

Johnson (To Be a Friend Is Fatal) makes his true-crime debut with this 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

This extraordinary book exposes 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

A true-crime tale that weaves seemingly unrelated threads into a spellbinding narrative tapestry

Mark Adams, author of Turn Right at Machu Picchu

A riveting detective story

The Bookseller

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

This gem of a book, is marvelous, moving, and transcendent. I can’t stop thinking about it

Dean King, author of Skeletons on the Zahara

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 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. 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

A real page-turner, while at the same time meditative, thoughtful and stylish, The Feather Thief takes us on a fascinating journey inside a bizarre and secretive underworld unlike any other.

Henry Hemming, author of M: Maxwell Knight, MI5's Greatest Spymaster

Unusual and engrossing page-turner… A wide-ranging, captivating work

Literary Review

This true story about the theft of a bunch of bird skins is one of the most peculiar and memorable true-crime books ever

CS Monitor

The book is The Orchid Thief for the fly-fishing and birding set: worth its weight in exotic bird feathers, which you’ll learn are very expensive

The Paris Review

The Feather Thief is a riveting read. It also stands, I believe, as a reminder of how an obsession with the ornaments of nature — be they feathers, bird eggs or ivory — can wreak havoc on our scientific heritage

Nature

Fascinating… An engagingly written story … you’ll be reading it when you should be doing other things

i paper

The Feather Thief truly is a tale of obsession . . . A wonderfully assured writer, [Johnson] takes us on a curious journey into the past . . . Vivid and arresting.

The Times

A bizarre and yet utterly gripping tale

Reader's Digest

A fascinating book… the kind of intelligent reported account that alerts us to a threat and that, one hopes, will never itself be endangered

Wall Street Journal

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 Johnson’s storytelling gifts that when I turned the last page I felt bereft.

Spectator

The Feather Thief is a compelling blend of mystery, quirky salmon flytiers, and dogged natural-history enthusiasts, and it highlights the obsessive lengths that people will go to destroy—and protect—some of the world’s most valuable treasures

Outside

A captivating account

Express Magazine

Johnson’s narrative entertainingly recounts not just Rist’s strange story but that of the pioneering Victorian ornithologists too

New Statesman

The kind of beguiling spiral of a non-fiction work which I adore

Stuart Kelly, Scotland on Sunday

The Feather Thief is not only a thrilling account of the crime and its aftermath but also a potted history of our relationship with the natural world

Mail on Sunday

The very best sort of nonfiction: wide-ranging, intelligent and gripping

Bookish Beck Blog

As well as recounting a crime this text provokes its readers to think about human obsession and greed about the fate of avian species which, by an accident of plumage, have vanished from the earth. I warmly recommend this unusual, rich book.

Trout & Salmon Magazine

A gripping natural-history detective story. Was Rist a cunning con-artist who more or less got away with the perfect, albeit clumsy crime? Or was he hopelessly addicted to feathers, to his hobby, and to his status as a young fly-tying protégé without the economic means to realise his dreams and potential?

Caught by the River

Weird and wonderful

The Tablet

The questions [The Feather Thief] raises are more pertinent than ever.

Daily Mail

A fascinating investigation of a seriously ridiculous crime

New Scientist

This well written account of the known facts is well worth a read

Birdwatch Magazine

It was hard to put the book down… Read it yourselves, enjoy it and learn from it!

British Birds