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Winged Obsession: The Pursuit Of The World's Most Notorious Butterfly Smuggler (2011)

by Jessica Speart(Favorite Author)

3.54 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

0061772437 (ISBN13: 9780061772436)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

William Morrow

review 1: This was a great read. Lots of information on butterflys, leaves you feeling in awe of these creatures. A story of obsession and passion. One man's obsession with butterflys, another man obsessed with the obsessed. Brings home the point of how weak and inadequate the laws protecting endangered species reallly are. Reads like a thriller and kept me turning pages late into the night...informative as well as entertaining.
review 2: An amazing true tale full of twists and turns -- and at the end, you're still not sure what was part of the smuggler's stories was fantasy and what was real. Jessica Speart, who normally writes fiction, sticks to the facts this time because there's no way she could've made up a story this wild. Speart's story focuses on the three-y... moreear undercover investigation that led to the arrest of Yoshi Kojima, the world's most notorious butterfly smuggler. Kojima openly boasted of outsmarting federal authorities trying to catch him, which just made the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agent assigned to his case -- a rookie with the unlikely name of Ed Newcomer -- even more determined to bring him down.Newcomer masquerades as a newbie butterfly enthusiast who befriends Kojima, then agrees to work as his partner selling endangered butterflies in the U.S. They chat via cell phone, e-mail and Skype, with Newcomer recording everything. Kojima zigs and zags like an errant swallowtail, making Newcomer's pursuit that much more difficult. As time goes on, Kojima starts sexually harassing Newcomer, begging him for smutty pictures even while promising him bigger and rarer butterfly specimens. Their odd relationship forms the heart of the book, and Speart does a great job of putting the reader right in the middle of it.My one criticism is that at one point when the Kojima case is stymied, Newcomer takes on a new case involving pigeon-fanciers who kill hawks, and Speart takes time away from the butterfly case to delve into this other case in far too much detail. It made me impatient to get back to the main story.The whole thing takes one more sick twist in the book's final chapter, when Speart herself at last confronts Kojima. It puts everything else in the book into a whole new perspective.By the way, I bought this book after serving on a panel with Speart at the Miami Book Fair International. If you ever get the chance to hear her talk about this book, don't miss it. She was terrific. less

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