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BIRD BRAINED
by Jessica Speart
Avon, April 1999
278 pages
$5.99
ISBN: 0380792907


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Rachel Porter, US Fish and Wildlife agent, has managed to get into trouble in each of her first two postings, New Orleans (GATOR AIDE) and Las Vegas (TORTOISE SOUP). She has now been foisted off on the head of the Miami bureau, who isn't sure that women belong in the service in the first place.

Inspections are virtually non-existent at Miami International Airport, but when Rachel opens a shipment that had already been cleared, a deadly snake leaps out of one crate and bites the importer, a slimy creature she suspects of importing more than snakes.

It is illegal to import wild birds into the United States, since the exotic tropical species are, in many cases, endangered, but the trade continues. There are flourishing, and legal, bird breeding farms in Florida, but the eggs of rare species, and even drugged birds, are still flown in. Rachel tries to catch at least one of the criminals, but when Willie Weed, the snake importer gives up a name, it turns out to be that of Alberto Dominguez, a bird breeder and informant to the Fish and Wildlife Service. When Porter goes to confront Dominguez, she fnds him murdered, his birds gone, except for 6 illegally imported rare birds drugged and put in a sack. Rachel is chloroformed, and when she awakens, she is left with no rare birds. She has only one overlooked blue feather to prove that the parrot from the Amazon had been there.

Speart is an environmental reporter who does her homework. There are now 7 books in the series, BIRD BRAINED is number 3, and in each, she details the threat to a different endgangered species in a different part of the US. Porter finds outrageous friends all over the country and manages to get herself in trouble while trying to save the world. I am always on the lookout for the next book in this fine series.

Reviewed by Barbara Franchi, September 2003

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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