This book does an unbelievably thorough job of recounting one of the most devastating recent thefts from a modern museum. In 2009, an American student studying at London's Royal Academy of Music broke into the Tring museum, which contains thousands of natural history specimens including birds collected by Charles Darwin and his contemporary Alfred Russel Wallace. Darwin and Wallace both independently formulated the theory of natural selection and survival of the fittest in the same decade, by observing and collecting birds on remote islands during the height of the British Empire. They both believed in the importance of preserving these birds for future science. At the same time, the colonial empire had developed a huge appetite for exotic and colorful feathers for Victorian hats, the cabinets of curiosities and natural history specimens which were in vogue in the upper class, and for another aristocrat's hobby: tying salmon flies. These appetites nearly drove many bird species to extinction. Modern day lovers of the Victorian art of salmon fly tying now comb the internet for feathers from these rare birds, desperate to get their hands on materials mentioned in Victorian books. The majority of these feathers are now semi-illegal to possess or sell. It was this obsession that drove 20 year old Edwin Rist to break a window at the Tring and escape with nearly 300 stolen bird skins. There followed a long detective investigation into how he'd done it and what happened with the feathers afterwards. I enjoyed the audiobook and was impressed by the persistence of the author, who pursued this story for half a decade.