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.

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 ] Charles Sobhraj chose to operate in these countries due to his ability to bribe officers, escape from prisons and utilizes fake or stolen passports.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. 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. LAPD homicide lieutenant Milo Sturgis is a master detective. He has a near-perfect solve rate and he’s written his own rulebook. 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.” 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 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.

The subject of this book, Charles Sobhraj, is confirmed to have taken the lives of over a dozen tourists throughout Asia in the 1970s. 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.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 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. 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. According to Thompson's 1982 obit: "The lanky writer had been in a coma for several days and died at 3 a.m. in St. Vincent's Hospital, a hospital official said. At his bedside were Robert Lantz, his agent of 15 years, and his two college-age sons, Kirk and Scott.