In a remote part of the Siberian forest a desperate poacher triggers a series of tragic events as a tiger turns man-eater. Part gripping detective story played out on a wild and exotic stage and part ecological parable, the Tiger is a true life murder mystery, written in snow. When Yuri Trush was called to investigate an attack by a Siberian tiger in December 1997, what he found was unlike anything he'd ever encountered. Nothing remained of the victim but stumps of bone protruding from his boots. Even more chilling was the evidence that this attack had been carefully orchestrated, as if the tiger was seeking revenge. Before long, the beast struck again, and Trush, leader of a tiger conservation unit, found himself forced to hunt this animal through the brutal cold of a Siberian winter, becoming intimately acquainted with the tiger's history, motives and unique method of attack - until their harrowing final encounter. John Vaillant recreates these astonishing events against a backdrop of Russia's most remote frontier, a place where the native peoples worship tigers but poachers threaten the species' survival. He describes the historic collisions between Chinese and Russian settlers (trappers, thieves, deserters and exiles) and the struggles of their descendants, who, in the chaotic aftermath of perestroika, turn to poaching to survive - in this case with deadly consequences.

A haunting, gripping exploration of predators and prey and an intimate portrait of a remarkable animal increasingly threatened by interaction with humans.