One thing that neither the book or the mini-series can capture is all that has happened after 1977 when Sobhraj and lover, Marie-Andrée Leclerc, are finally captured and jailed. Once Interpol took the case things began to pop. They were wanted in various cities in at least six countries simultaneously. Descriptions and pictures, witnesses began to appear. Between 1972 and 1976 it is believed that Charles Sobhraj killed between 12 to 24 people according to New York Times. The book ends with Charles’s trial in India and he is sentenced for the murders for only seven years of hard labor. The book was written in 1979 while Charles Sobhraj is still serving his sentence in Tihar, “the” Indian jail. But Charles Sobhraj, now that the East knows of him, has set his eyes to the West. A vast country where he feels that he will be incognito. The United States. One of the best ever true crime books I've read. How this author managed to know so much about this case is beyond me but the way he writes is so great. I loved everything of this book. It is so exiting and he brings you to another world,and you are never bored.

I read this book when it first came out (Jan. 1980)and got a signed copy just before I left on a trip around the world.I read this while traveling and by coincidence stayed at some of the places the killer/con man worked out of. This tale actually continued for many years after this book ended. Over the following years I read several news articles of Charles Sobhraj amazing escapes from prison. The subject of this book, Charles Sobhraj, is confirmed to have taken the lives of over a dozen tourists throughout Asia in the 1970s. Thompson received the National Headliner Award for investigative reporting. He was also the 1977 Edgar Award winner for Blood and Money. This book is the perfect accompaniment to the smash-hit BBC true crime drama and paints a portrait of a master manipulator psychopath who still resides in jail to this day.Finally in 1976 Sobraji was arrested and sent to prison in India for seven years, where by all accounts he lived a happy existence as he had money and gemstones to bribe his captors. He deliberately got himself resentenced to prison there after trying to escape, so he could not be extradited to Thailand. Finally in 1996 he was set free and returned to France where he lived for several years.

He knew he was very ill, but he was absolutely determined to beat it," Lantz said. "Thank God it was very fast." Written by Thomas Thompson, the author of "Blood and Money", this book is a bit longer than it maybe should have been, and the prose is a bit flowery. However, this is a pretty solid true-crime read. Thompson paints a vivid portrait of Sobhraj. Others who have read this book have remarked how “impressed” by this pseudo-real life Hannibal Lector they are. Being well-read, psychologically overpowering and a self described “Übermensch” and all.Thompson joined Life Magazine in 1961 and became an editor and staff writer. While at Life he covered the JFK assassination and was the first writer to locate Lee Harvey Oswald's home and wife. Among his stories were coverage of the making of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band by the Beatles, in which he revealed the group's extensive drug use; an in-depth look at Frank Sinatra and his alleged Mafia ties; and the 40th and 50th birthdays of Elizabeth Taylor.

This book was written in 1979 and details the murders as committed by Charles Sobhraj throughout Asia. Sobhraj was born to a Vietnamese mother and Indian father, which in some ways left him as a person without a country and eventually allowed him to move more freely during his crimes.Serpentine was not originally intended for publication but was instead written in 2004 at the special request of Nicholas Hytner (then the artistic director at the Royal National Theatre) to be auctioned for charity during the company's production of His Dark Materials; the work sold for a "substantial sum". [1] At the time of writing Pullman had not intended to revisit Lyra as an adult but after the publication of The Secret Commonwealth decided to issue the novella as it prefigures Lyra and Pantalaimon's character development in The Book of Dust. [1] Synopsis [ edit ] The fact that this miserable low-life menacing vermin at 77 is still living and breathing, all-be-it in a bed-bug-rat-infested Nepalese cell, defies all logic or faith in true justice. He just had heart-surgery, paid for by the Nepalese citizens! And, the snake is remarried to an attractive 22-year-old Bengali /Nepalis woman, his female Nepalese attorney's daughter, no less, and a recent reality-TV star, who believes he's 'a good man', that it's 'not about who Charles was, but who he is today'. (Eye-roll) When you think of the phrase 'they can't make this stuff up', that's this story. Psychologist Alex Delaware and detective Milo Sturgis search for answers to a brutal, decades-old crime in this electrifying psychological thriller from the #1 New York Times bestselling master of suspense.

This book is more like a documentary of Charles Sobhraj’s life than a novel. The way Thomas Thompson has written it though, reads more like a murder novel. This book is totally evolutionary in its style. The author has such an omniscient style of adding sharp jabs of morality intermixed with a hands-off 'this happened - what can be added by stating anything other than the sordid facts' manner of writing. Charles Sobhraj is a character that exists outside of the nuclear family sphere, and the author nicely links his early obsession with the tragic (his mother as a virgin/whore and his father as a respectable business/monster without a heart figure) as the means in which Charles hardens. It's a long book and almost everyone mentions this, however, with some minor editing of the trial worth considering I don't know how you could omit any of the detail - from the killer charm Charles had with what can be only be viewed as seriously lost women, to his grandiose pomposity and successful boasts that he could master any subject in the space of an afternoon, finishing with the constant betrayal of his French brothers and sisters in a way that seems motivated by Charles' obsession with score-settling and to punish those who succeeded legitimately. Serpentine boasts a set of delightful characters and an impressive plot. It kept my interest until the very end with a surprising reveal and promise for more action in the next book in the series. The story of Charles Sobhraj, a charismatic murderer who killed as many as 12 people and robbed God-knows-how-many after drugging them.

Detective Milos Sturgis and psychologist Alex Delaware work together on a complex case that leads them to a set of bizarre locations and suspicious characters. The cold case soon turns interesting as the team connect the seemingly unbelievable coincidences to discover that most characters are not who they seem.