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The Lizard King: The True Crimes and Passions of the World's Greatest Reptile Smugglers
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Manufacturer: Twelve
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Imagine The Sopranos, with snakes! The Lizard King is a fascinating account of a father and son family business suspected of smuggling reptiles, and the federal agent who tried to take them down.
When Bryan Christy began to investigate the world of reptile smuggling, he had no idea what he would be in for. In the course of his research, he was bitten between the eyes by a blood python, chased by a mother alligator, and sprayed by a bird-eating tarantula. But perhaps more dangerous was coming face to face with Michael J. Van Nostrand, owner of Strictly Reptiles, a thriving family business in Hollywood, Florida. Van Nostrand imports as many as 300,000 iguanas each year (over half the total of America's most popular imported reptile), as well as hundreds of thousands of snakes, lizards, frogs, spiders, and scorpions.
Van Nostrand was suspected of being a reptile smuggler by Special Agent Chip Bepler of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, who devoted years of his life in an obsessive quest to expose The Lizard King's cold-blooded crimes. How this cat-and-mouse game ended is engrossing and surprising. (2008)
PRODUCT DESCRIPTIONS:
Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 364.18
EAN: 9780446580953
ISBN: 0446580953
Label: Twelve
Manufacturer: Twelve
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 241
Publication Date: 2008-08-01
Publisher: Twelve
Studio: Twelve
SIMILAR ITEMS:
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• The Story of Edgar Sawtelle: A Novel (Oprah Book Club #62)
CUSTOMER REVIEWS:
Slithery Suspense -
Bryan Christy's Lizard King has all the qualities I look for in a good read - outstanding writing, a compelling story, conscienceness raising information, and suspense. I couldn't put the book down and when I was finished I read it all over again!
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A Gripping Tale -
"The Lizard King" is a gripping tale that takes readers into the subterranean world of reptile smuggling. The book features a fascinating cast of characters, ranging from bold, brash smuggling kingpins to the honorable men and women of the law who pursue them against great odds. Lay readers will learn a wealth of information about the world of legitimate reptile collecting and the seamy underworld of reptile smuggling. The scale of both is eye-opening. Thanks to gaping holes in the laws governing reptile importation and the high level of demand among legitimate and illegitimate collectors for exotic species, smuggling of protected and endangered animals has been relatively easy and tremendously lucrative. The odds are stacked against government agents who have made it their life's work to protect these beautiful and rare species.
Author Bryan Christy is to be commended for his voluminous research. It is always a pleasure to discover a book that opens up a world previously unknown to a reader. He also deserves credit for the courage it took to gain access to some of the smuggling world's most powerful players so that he could authenticate facts for his story. I found the subject matter deeply engaging throughout.
Christy also shows skill in assuming a neutral tone in describing the exploits of both the smugglers and the lawmen who are trying to bring them to justice. He tells the story from both points of view so the reader understands the thinking of both sides. Although some readers may feel that his narrative stance should be one of moral outrage toward the smugglers, I found his objectivity to be a more effective tone. It drew from me a feeling of revulsion toward the smugglers and elicited my admiration for the government agents pursuing them. Had the author taken a strongly moralistic tone toward his subject, I likely would have felt less outrage myself, for the writer would have done most of the work for me.
The Lizard King is a book that deserves wide circulation. Its readers will not be disappointed.
good crime drama, thought provoking conservation message - 
i can't add much to the review written by Bill Love (one of the reptile industry's leading lights - if you've had a pet corn snake in the last 20 years or more, you probably owe him at least an indirect thanks); i refer you to that for a meat-and-potatoes discussion of the book. simply stated, author Christy gives the reader a good crime drama as well as a fairly accurate history of the reptile hobby in the US.
what got me about reading it was - like Bill - the statements about deforestation, habitat loss and the skin & fur trade being bigger threats to wildlife than smuggling. this is certainly true; i've had experiences that have convinced me of this long before reading this book. also, as Bill points out (and as is mentioned in the closing pages of the book), several of the species that currently form the backbone of the pet trade began as high-priced individual specimens of dubious legal origin: bearded and frilled dragons, Indonesian and Australian dwarf monitors, dart frogs, even the albino Burmese python that graces the book's cover as well as its first few pages of text.
some of the book's descriptions of animals confiscated by USF&W are heartbreaking. hundreds, sometimes thousands of rare animals dead at the hands of people who, however well-meaning, had neither the knowledge nor the resources to keep them alive. such a waste...!
i would like to live to see a future in which our descendants have the possibility of seeing living, breathing examples of the truly amazing life forms we share it with today, and not just pictures in a book captioned with the word 'extinct.' to that end, and given both my own experiences as well as the examples of captive-produced reptiles available today from possibly smuggled ancestral stock, i have to wonder just how evil animal smuggling really is. as an individual with some background in biological science, as well as identifying myself as both a lifelong reptile keeper and a "tree hugging" conservationist, that is not a statement that i make lightly.
i'd urge anyone reading this review to pick up the book and see if - apart from being a pretty good adventure story - it can add anything to their understanding of the world and our place in it.
good subject but scattered writing -
Being a reptile lover, I loved how the book was well researched with reptile smuggling history and how the popular names in the industry had their part in it. A more linear story-telling would have helped though, I got confused as to who is what jumping from chapter to chapter. Also, the whole process of capturing van nostrand took about less than 1/4 of the book; and wasn't such a spectacular ending. It's a nice book for reptile people, but may be very confusing for everyone else.
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Fascinating read -
We have all heard of smuggling. There is drug smuggling, even people smuggling. But very few of us have ever heard of reptile smuggling. And even fewer of us have any idea what a massive industry it is. The Lizard King opens our eyes to this industry and gives us a crash course in the players and the game pieces that make up this multimillion dollar, worldwide game.
The story follows the Van Nostrands, a family enterprise that has cornered the market in the reptile industry. From the outside they look like a well-run and extremely successful family-run business that has cornered the market of reptile supply. However, Chris Bepler, an agent with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, knows that this success has come, in part, due to the family's less-than-legal dealings in the reptile world. He starts a cat-and-mouse game that will traverse the globe and test the limits of the Fish and Wildlife Service and Agent Bepler himself.
Unexpected relationships form throughout the book as each strand of the smuggling web connects. These relationships are the core of the book and take a smuggling case from something you read in the paper to something that happened right next door.
The only hang-up I had with the book is that there is some jumping around in the timeline, which can leave you confused for a page or two while you try to replace yourself in the time and space the book has jumped too. This is not a big problem though and is far outweighed by the great storytelling and fascinating people.
A book unlike any you have read before, The Lizard King will take you on a twisting journey in which you will crave the culmination of the story while at the same time not wanting it to end.
Armchair Interviews says: A most interesting read.
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