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

Product Information

Charles Sobhraj chose to operate in these countries due to his ability to bribe officers, escape from prisons and utilizes fake or stolen passports. 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. 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." 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.” 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.

Thompson first wrote Western stories for pulp magazines in 1940 after stints as a sailor, a nightclub entertainer, a secretary and a furniture salesman. He later published hundreds of articles in national general-interest magazines and wrote 25 Western novels, including “Range Drifter,” “Shadow of the Butte” and “Bitter Water.” (latimes.com)

Subscribe to my blog via email

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. 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.

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." Thompson received the National Headliner Award for investigative reporting. He was also the 1977 Edgar Award winner for Blood and Money. 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 ]

Recent Posts

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. The facts describe a likely loser case: 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 job 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 are lurking in the present. ‘ 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. 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. 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.