The Red Flock
Listing Details
Note to readers: All the Angel of Mercy Series books are standalone novels.
Portland Power Couple Jed and Lexi Miller, rabid birders, hatch a scheme that turns wealthy friends into a crime syndicate, the Cardinal 14, illegally importing endangered bird species for their private aviaries. Collective members pay up to $250,000 for a single live rare bird, but only if it's listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species, the world’s most comprehensive information source on the global extinction risk status of animal, fungus and plant species. For her 50th birthday, Lexi wants a Cherry-Throated Tanager, a bird she saw as a kid on a trip to a remote Brazilian rainforest with her anthropologist father. The cost for one of only 25 in existence is $1 million. Jed won't settle for less for his 50th. His sights are set on James Audubon's Birds of America, a collection of bird paintings—including images of nine extinct birds—from the early 1800s, which sells for $12 million at auction. When a bookseller dies, and a rare book room curator turns up murdered, the FBI and Portland Police race to prevent more deaths and bring those responsible to justice. Bird Veterinarian and Angel of Mercy Jim Briggs, who finds himself squeezed in the middle as the case unfolds, is the one person who can stop the exotic bird poaching and save the species.