The Falcon Thief

A True Tale of Adventure, Treachery, and the Hunt for the Perfect Bird

By: Joshua Hammer

Narrated by: Matthew Lloyd Davies

A rollicking true-crime adventure about a rogue who trades in rare birds and their eggs—and the wildlife detective determined to stop him.

On May 3, 2010, an Irish national named Jeffrey Lendrum was apprehended at Britain’s Birmingham International Airport with a suspicious parcel strapped to his stomach. Inside were fourteen rare peregrine falcon eggs snatched from a remote cliffside in Wales.

So begins a tale almost too bizarre to believe, following the parallel lives of a globe-trotting smuggler who spent two decades capturing endangered raptors worth millions of dollars as race champions—and Detective Andy McWilliam of the United Kingdom’s National Wildlife Crime Unit, who’s hell bent on protecting the world’s birds of prey.

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

Critic reviews

"Narrator Matthew Lloyd Davies infuses this story of rare-egg theft with all the tension and excitement it deserves. In 2010, a man carrying 14 peregrine falcon eggs was detained at a British airport. This audiobook brings to light Jeffrey Lendrum's career as a smuggler of wild bird eggs destined for rich clients in the Middle East, where falcon racing is popular, especially among the very wealthy. Davies expertly matches his tone to the material, which ranges from breathless adventure, as Lendrum scales cliffs seeking aeries, to the tamer but still fascinating history of falconry, oology, and egg collectors. With perfect pacing, Davies brings every aspect of this exotic story to life: Lendrum himself, the detective who helped convict him, and the underworld of wildlife crime."

Good story, terrible narrator.

Very interesting story, but the narrator was simply terrible. I think he does it for dramatic effect, but will begin a sentence in a regular speaking volume, and then halfway through drop it to a whisper. I listen in the car a lot, with some background noise, and found it hard to understand what he was saying much of the time.

Nearly Interesting

Marred by a baffling commitment to facts and descriptions of EVERY component of the account, an interesting crime story does live inside this book. But, I found myself wondering half the run time why I needed to know the endless facts being recounted to me. With the help of a more ruthless editor—unafraid of chopping out the chaff—the tale could have been much better told.

automatic sexy

The Falcon Thief gets a good rating from me and a recommendation for anyone interested in birds of prey. The story is about the dark existence of an international raptor trade and the story about a nest robber. The author presents an interesting story about aspects of Falconry, Hawking and egg collecting I had only just been aware of...

Enraptured

Once, in the subarctic, I was approached by three people asking if I knew where a Gyrfalcon nest was. I was obviously a birder and they obviously were not. I asked him what they were doing. They said they were filming a documentary about the effects of climate change on Gyrfalcons. Fortunately, I told them I didn’t know anything.

Fascinating Tale

Contains mild animal death and/or abuse but integral to telling story and not too graphic