Coldblooded Commerce in Coldblooded Contraband

Book: THE LIZARD KING The True Crimes and Passions of the World’s Greatest Reptile Smugglers
Review in the NYT: In “The Lizard King,” his book about the wild world of reptile-dealing chicanery, Bryan Christy describes a smuggling incident at Miami International Airport. An Argentine man who claimed to be carrying a suitcase full of ceramics turned out to have crammed all this into his single piece of luggage: 107 chaco tortoises, 103 red-footed tortoises, 76 tartaruga turtles, five boa constrictors, seven rainbow boas, seven parrot snakes, 20 tarantulas, 10 scorpions, 90 tree frogs, 20 red tegu lizards, about a dozen other lizards and two South American rattlesnakes. It was one wiggling, squiggling, brilliantly packed load of trouble.