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xk8linx19 's review for:
The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century
by Kirk Wallace Johnson
What a wild ride!
While I genuinely like true crime, one issue I have with the genre is that, too often, it seems like it's less journalism and more the author playing amateur detective. Which can be really harmful in stories about open cases in particular, where victims, family members, and other loved ones are still around. Imagine if you knew someone who was killed and the crime went unsolved, then some person you don't know writes a book (or, god forbid, does a podcast) about that person, their family, and maybe even you--perhaps accusing or insinuating that several of those close to the person could have been involved in their murder. It would be devastating. That's a tough genre to play into, and I have a hard time reading a lot of true crime as a result, regardless of how compelling it can be.
However! While Edwin Rist's burglary of 299 bird skins from a British natural history museum is INSANE and resulted in a severe blow to the academic community...no one got hurt. There aren't victim's family members to worry about. There's Edwin's family, which the author mercifully leaves pretty well alone--he goes to Rist himself, speaks directly to his friends in the community who are willing to speak with him. The Feather Thief scratches the true-crime itch with a truly BONKERS crime (I honestly had no idea fly-tiers could be as intense as they are, but I suppose every hobby has its enthusiasts), but no one really gets hurt. And I think that's why I liked this book so much. I didn't have to feel guilty for wanting to hear all the drama, I didn't have to sit there wondering what was wrong with the author for involving himself. Weird that the lower stakes made me like something more, but here we are.
While I genuinely like true crime, one issue I have with the genre is that, too often, it seems like it's less journalism and more the author playing amateur detective. Which can be really harmful in stories about open cases in particular, where victims, family members, and other loved ones are still around. Imagine if you knew someone who was killed and the crime went unsolved, then some person you don't know writes a book (or, god forbid, does a podcast) about that person, their family, and maybe even you--perhaps accusing or insinuating that several of those close to the person could have been involved in their murder. It would be devastating. That's a tough genre to play into, and I have a hard time reading a lot of true crime as a result, regardless of how compelling it can be.
However! While Edwin Rist's burglary of 299 bird skins from a British natural history museum is INSANE and resulted in a severe blow to the academic community...no one got hurt. There aren't victim's family members to worry about. There's Edwin's family, which the author mercifully leaves pretty well alone--he goes to Rist himself, speaks directly to his friends in the community who are willing to speak with him. The Feather Thief scratches the true-crime itch with a truly BONKERS crime (I honestly had no idea fly-tiers could be as intense as they are, but I suppose every hobby has its enthusiasts), but no one really gets hurt. And I think that's why I liked this book so much. I didn't have to feel guilty for wanting to hear all the drama, I didn't have to sit there wondering what was wrong with the author for involving himself. Weird that the lower stakes made me like something more, but here we are.