2. The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival

By John Vaillant

It’s surprising this book hasn’t been made into a Hollywood movie yet.  This thrilling true story features three main characters: Vladimir Markov, the poacher; Yuri Trush, the lead tracker; and the titular predator with a vendetta.  It’s also part natural history and part Russian history.  The author goes into detail about the “bleak post-perestroika Russian economy, creating a firm sense of place, but also sapping some of the narrative momentum”.

Vaillant skillfully recreates the events of December 1997 when a rogue tiger besieged a remote logging village in Russia’s Far Eastern Primorsky Krai, where most of the world's Amur tigers live.  Amur is a more accurate term for the Siberian tiger that inhabits that region. 

It all began when a local hard-up poacher, Vladimir Markov, shot and wounded a male tiger, then stole part of his kill, breaking a kind of unspoken pact between man and tiger since these apex predators generally avoid humans.  

“The injured tiger hunted Markov down in a way that appears to be chillingly premeditated. The tiger staked out Markov's cabin, systematically destroyed anything that had Markov's scent on it, and then waited by the front door for Markov to come home.”  

Based on the evidence later found at the scene, the tiger had waited 12 to 48 hours for his target to return, in which the tiger killed Markov, dragged him into a bush and ate him.   

Enter Yuri Trush, head of an anti-poaching unit known as Inspection Tiger,an organization created by the Russian government to combat the black-markettrafficking of tigers and tiger parts.  Physically imposing and a skilled fighter, Trush was a larger-than-life figure, and a"real warrior."

The rest of the book is mostly a cat and mouse game, but who is the cat and who is the mouse?

A compelling read from start to finish.  I would like to read more books by Vaillant - I hear The Golden Spruce is another good one.