Winged Obsession

Book excerpt: One of the world's most beautiful endangered species, butterflies are as lucrative as gorillas, pandas, and rhinos on the black market. In this cutthroat $200 million business, no one was more successful—or posed a greater ecological danger—than Yoshi Kojima, the kingpin of butterfly smugglers. In Winged Obsession, author Jessica Speart tells the riveting true story of rookie U.S. Fish and Wildlife Agent Ed Newcomer's determined crusade to halt the career of a brazen and ingenious criminal with an almost supernatural sixth sense for survival. But the story doesn't end there. Speart chronicles her own attempts, while researching the book, to befriend Kojima before betraying him—unaware that the cagey smuggler had his own plans to make the writer a player in his illegal butterfly trade.