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. 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.

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. 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. 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 ] 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.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. 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. 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. 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, megarich young woman who is obsessed with reopening the coldest of cases—the decades-old death of the mother she never knew.

Charles was astute. He was charismatic and charming to women and men alike. He had a mystical magnetism about him that led many to their deaths and left the ones whose life was spared, with deep mental and emotional scars.

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. I know Queen Anne in no way abuts Lake Washington. It lies between Lake Union and Puget Sound. Lake Washington lies over another hill to the east of Lake Union and I5. While fog may have lain heavy in the communities around and over the water on Lake Washington, that body of water is insufficient to create a weather event in Queen Anne. 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. 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. 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.