On the one hand, it is exceptionally written and weaves a winding tale that hooks you in as a reader. He finally made his way to India on his own, by manipulating people, luring them to his schemes, persuading them to steal, drug and even kill people every time he needed money. At his bedside were Robert Lantz, his agent of 15 years, and his two college-age sons, Kirk and Scott.

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. I still can't believe that this one person was capable of so much evil and wickedness and yet was able to outwit his captors for so long. Brillant bandit des grands chemins, champion de la manipulation et de l'extorsion qui arrive à s'évader de prison comme on sort de chez Starbuck.It's like, not every dialogue the man had in his life came straight out of the golden era of cinema! This was a time when thousands of young Americans and Europeans went to South and East Asia looking for nirvana or a good time and encountering instead, poverty and addiction, or in some cases, disappearance and death. The Afghanistan escape was so gnarly, he used a big horse syringe and took out a ton of his own blood then drank it from a glass, then pretended he was dying of some kind of internal hemorrhaging, then escapes from the hospital. The book is a much more linear and is easier to follow than the BBC/Netflix mini-series is and has terrific in-depth character and location descriptions.

You are not entirely sure whether you want him to be hanged or you want him to have a good life, leave it all behind and settle somewhere. For the unfortunate dozen plus confirmed murdered (and potentially up to 100), he would light his victims on fire while still alive, drown them, shoot them, or whatever means for killing he felt like, before stealing all their belongings. Though his first killing was most likely that of an unlucky taxi driver, he generally sought out young Westerners who he befriended, plied with food and drink laced with barbituates, and then robbed of jewelry, passports, valuables and money. Whenever one missed an important detail the other would point it out and vice versa and their teamwork was extremely important towards the end when surprising relationships between the characters emerged. Just as someone starts getting tired of reading your weird obsession with a minor detail that has nothing to do with the overall plot, you spend twice as long going on about nothing just to piss the reader off.The book is a biography of Charles’ life from birth in 1944 up to his eventual capture and jailing in 1976. Quite simply, this book, along with Anne Rule's The Stranger Beside Me and Michele McNamara's I'll be Gone in the Dark, is one of the best true crime stories ever written. 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. In masterly fashion Thompson examines the lives not only of the intelligent, charismatic, conscienceless and thoroughly dangerous Sobhraj but also of the unsuspecting victims that he drugged, robbed, sometimes tortured and without a qualm killed.