Due to the overriding parallelisms between Farrukh Dhondy's The Bikini Murders and the highly sensational publicised life story of the notorious serial killer Charles Sobhraj, despite the author's protests to the contrary, it becomes virtually impossible for the reader to treat the book as an independent work of fiction. Thus is born an identity crisis for the novel.
The resemblances do emanate throughout the course of the novel. To begin, the title of the novel and the cover are reminiscent of the murdered American woman found in Thailand, clad in a flowered bikini — the first of the many murders Sobhraj committed in Thailand. 'The Bikini Murderer' became an epithet used in connection with Sobhraj thereafter. The novel's protagonist Johnson Thhat's birthplace, parentage, childhood experiences, progression into a life of crime and international intrigue are again aspects of uncanny similarity. Perhaps the constant comparisons are a further result of the persistent non acknowledgement of any inspiration from the eventful life of Charles Sobhraj.
The book on its part is a graphic account of its protagonist, the internationally defamed killer and con artist, Johnson Thhat's trysts with crimes of varying degree and dimension, his imprisonments and escapes, primarily in his own words. The opening scene and imagery of the novel depicts Thhat (a.k.a Eduard Du Monde) as the proverbial gambler playing blackjack in a Kathmandu casino (the game recurs at various points along the plot). The description equipped with taut statements that summarise Thhat's personal belief system as developed over time, how "the game of blackjack is part of the big game of luck…." and the principles of the gambling table applicable to his life as well.
After a cat and mouse game that ensues between Inspector Pradhan, an ex-policeman and a defensive Thhat, the latter is arrested and sent to prison in Kathmandu charged with the murder of Mary Ann Smolinsky, an American who vanished from Kathmandu over two decades ago and whose body was found chopped and burnt to bits.
Thhat manages to strike a curious deal with Pradhan, whereby Pradhan allows Thhat to get in touch with the American authorities (whom Thhat supposes will help him) in return for a confession or a memoir.
FACT BOX
Name: Farrukh Dhondy Age: 64 (born 1944)
Education and Professional Experience:
Bachelor of Science degree from the Poona University in 1964 Awarded a scholarship(1964) to read English at Cambridge.
Lectured at the Leicester College for Higher Education from 1968 to 1969
Worked as Commissioning Editor, Multicultural Programming, for Channel 4 TV, UK from 1984 to 1997
A freelance journalist and writer from 1997-2002, worked with The Pioneer, Asian Age and India Today.
Novels And Short Stories:
East End at Your Feet (Short Story Collection, 1976)
Siege of Babylon (Short Story Collection, 1977)
Come to Mecca (Short Story Collection, 1978)
Poona Company (Short Story Collection, 1980), re-launched (2008)
Bombay Duck (Novel, 1990)
C.L.R. James: A Life (Biography, 1996)
Film And Television:
Adaptation of stories from Come To Mecca and East End At Your Feet for BBC. (Television)
Split Wide Open (Film, Screenplay 1999)
Kisna: The Warrior Poet (Film, Screenplay 2005)
Mangal Pandey : The Rising (Film, Script and Screenplay 2005)
Adaptation of Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Television, Script Forthcoming)
Adaptation of V.S. Naipaul's A Bend In The River (Television, Forthcoming)
The autobiography begins with Thhat's rather loveless childhood, his first experience with the power of seeing "fear in a victim's eyes" and moves on to the road he took hence forth travelling to Bombay to meet his genetic, diamond-merchant father. His acquaintance with Ravina, his cold and calculative accomplice with whom he starts off his crimes in Bangkok alluring gullible foreign tourists with a promise to sell them superior quality diamonds at low rates and later murdering them to possess their belongings. The series of racy and intensely dramatic incidents lead Thhat in and out of jail, assumimg several disguises in the process and catapults in nothing short of his involvements with Muslim terrorism and the war in Iraq. Somewhere amidst all of that Thhat attempts to find a literary agent for his nascent writing talents on his return to Paris after an enriching stay in Tihar jail.
Dhondy's justification is that through the book, he wished to "examine the mind of someone who kills someone". However, Johnson Thhat as a character doesn't really deliver. A derelict in many ways Thhat subscribes to the convenience of Buddhism, where his mind is "relieved of the responsibility of his actions", despises Freud and is able to form for himself certain ideological tenets derived purely from deductive reasoning. With these qualities initially apparent in the narrative, Thhat displays glimmerings of a character along the lines of someone like Dostoyevsky's Raskolnikov (Crime And Punishment), with a perverse intellect and divergent thinking, but they soon fade along the raunchy trail of crime and intrigue that follows.
Having said that, it is evident in the novel that Dhondy is contemptuous of any attempts to classify Thhat's behaviour using criminal psychology that are found in manuals or similar themed novels. Yet in the end, the central character becomes just that: a stereotype of a different kind. A suave and sensational killer with complicated relationships and embroilments, but sadly not much depth.
The Bikini Murders has all the right ingredients for a blockbuster commercial movie that almost yearns to be made. Copious amounts of sex, scandals, double crosses, startling and sudden twists, illicit affairs and ex flames and illegitimate children that reappear at just the right moment, embedded in a backdrop of international locations. The film version to be enjoyed with the glitz and glamour that are an integral part of the process would be worth anticipating!
Book Reviews 
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Due to the overriding parallelisms between Farrukh Dhondy's The Bikini Murders and the highly sensational publicised life story of the notorious serial killer Charles Sobhraj, despite the author's protests to the contrary, it becomes virtually impossible for the reader to treat the book as an independent work of fiction. Thus is born an identity crisis for the novel. .jpg)
The book on its part is a graphic account of its protagonist, the internationally defamed killer and con artist, Johnson Thhat's trysts with crimes of varying degree and dimension, his imprisonments and escapes, primarily in his own words. The opening scene and imagery of the novel depicts Thhat (a.k.a Eduard Du Monde) as the proverbial gambler playing blackjack in a Kathmandu casino (the game recurs at various points along the plot). The description equipped with taut statements that summarise Thhat's personal belief system as developed over time, how "the game of blackjack is part of the big game of luck…." and the principles of the gambling table applicable to his life as well. 
