by Kirk Wallace Johnson
Viking, 2018. 320 pgs. Non-Fiction.
One evening in July 2009, twenty-year-old American flautist Edwin Rist broke into the Tring Museum, an outpost of the British Museum of Natural History. His objective? To make off with as many rare bird specimens as his suitcase could carry. Rist planned on keeping some of them for his own personal use, but others he planned to sell to fund a new gold flute he had his eye on. Who would (illegally) buy dead birds? Let me introduce you to the Victorian salmon fly-tying community.
I first heard a version of this story on the podcast This American Life and worried that reading the book would feel really repetitive. That was not the case! Johnson includes so many details from Wallace’s scientific expeditions (the guy who caught the birds in the first place), to the history of fly-tying, to details on the heist itself. He also does a great job of conveying information without info-dumping. I would recommend this book for anyone who enjoys true crime stories in general, but particularly as a non-violent/gory true crime option.
AU
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