Serpentine: A short story from the world of His Dark Materials and The Book of Dust

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There is a sentence, near the end of the book: "The trial had long since become mired in tedium, a play with no end, its performers trapped." I found it ironic.

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. LAPD homicide lieutenant Milo Sturgis is a master detective. He has a near-perfect solve rate and he’s written his own rule book. Some of those successes—the toughest ones—have involved his best friend, the brilliant psychologist Alex Delaware. But Milo doesn’t call Alex in unless cases are “different.” For any of you that have had parents warn about the dangers of traveling to Asia you’re contemplating, alone or maybe with friends or someone you’re dating, this guy was the worst of worst nightmares come true. Don’t tell them this guy existed because, while an outlier and extremely rare, his actions from 40+ years ago still make for an effective boogey man today. Basically, someone who a screenwriter or murder mystery novelists couldn’t even conceive of in their own minds.

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The payoff of the upstairs neighbour and the civil servant, who through pure efficiency final nail a truly desperate (and by then fairly stupid) Sobhraj to the post is great reading. The sentence as the epilogue is a joke of giant proportions.

This murder warrants an immediate call: Milo’s independence has been compromised as never before, as the department pressures him to cater to the demands of a mogul. A hard-to-fathom, mega-rich young woman obsessed with reopening the coldest of cases: the decades-old death of the mother she never knew. I struggled with the monotonous and matter-of-fact writing style which did not veer far from direct speech and few dispersed descriptions. I realise that this is the preferred style of the author however it didn’t suit many of the adrenaline filled scenes and often read too much like a movie or play script. The facts describe a likely loser: a mysterious woman found with a bullet in her head in a torched Cadillac that has overturned on infamously treacherous Mulholland Drive. No physical evidence, no witnesses, no apparent motive. And a slew of detectives have already worked the case and failed. But as Delaware and Sturgis begin digging, the mist begins to lift. Too many coincidences. Facts turn out to be anything but. And as they soon discover, very real threats lurking in the present. Serpentine, a fantasy novella by Philip Pullman, is set after His Dark Materials and before the second book of The Book of Dust series. The manuscript was originally sold at a charity auction in 2004 and the book was publicly released in October 2020. [1] Origins [ edit ]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. Thompson seems to be Charles Shobhraj's shadow during this entire episode of Charles' life. At times it seems he is deep within Charles to see his weaknesses, that seems to elude almost everyone, except Charles and Thompson. He was born in Texas and graduated from the University of Texas in 1955. He then worked as a reporter and editor at the Houston Press. 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. Several times while reading “Serpentine”, my jaw hit the floor. Other times, I had to put the book down in disgust. But still, I soldiered on because I was reading a brilliantly written account of one of the most sociopathic, self-serving and evil conmen and murderer that’s ever walked this earth.

Serpentine by Thomas Thompson tells the story of serial killer Charles Sobhraj, the notorious ‘Serpent’ or ‘bikini killer’ who preyed on Western tourists throughout the hippie trail of Southeast Asia during the 1970s. Joined by his band of ‘followers’ you could almost say that this murderer had a cult following, however, unlike Charles Manson, Charles Sobhraj was hands-on when it came to killing. 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. To me, out of the multitude of sad and tragic events and victims' stories caused by this beast, this was one of the saddest for me: "Thompson's family believed that the liver disease (hepatitis) that caused his death was contracted in the Far East while investigating the Charles Sobhraj saga." Charles Sobhraj chose to operate in these countries due to his ability to bribe officers, escape from prisons and utilizes fake or stolen passports.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. He was a co-founder and president in 1957 of Western Writers of America and later received two of that group’s Spur Awards for his writing. Thompson was a life member of the National Cowboy Hall of Fame." He knew he was very ill, but he was absolutely determined to beat it," Lantz said. "Thank God it was very fast." 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 ]

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. 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.In this story, a teenage Lyra and her dæmon Pantalaimon revisit Trollesund, the Arctic town prominently featured in Northern Lights as the place of her first meeting with the aeronaut Lee Scoresby and the armoured bear Iorek Byrnison. They seek the witch-consul Dr. Lanselius in the hope of finding answers to their ability to separate. [1] Audiobook [ 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. Sobraj often surrounded himself with needy or vulnerable people who he used snd cajoled into helping him commit his crimes. Two of his most famous associates were Ajay Choudhry, an Indian career criminal who disappeared in 1976 and Marie-Andree Leclerq, a Quebecoise who he had seduced and who became his "wife" and partner in crime. Like his wife, Leclerq, or "Monique" as she was known, provided Sobraji with a veneer of respectability, and like many of his minions, she was loyal and desperately in love with him. He often hosted parties in his Bangkok home, where he met with the potential victims he had befriended. He had an unerring eye for weakness or vulnerability. 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.