cover image Portrait of a Monster: Joran Van der Sloot, a Murder in Peru, and the Natalee Holloway Mystery

Portrait of a Monster: Joran Van der Sloot, a Murder in Peru, and the Natalee Holloway Mystery

Lisa Pulitzer and Cole Thompson. St. Martin's, $25.99 (288p) ISBN 978-0-312-35921-8

Based on interviews, press accounts, and confidential police reports from four continents, New York Times journalist Pulitzer (Stolen Innocence) and Thompson (coauthor of the bestselling A Deadly Game) look at the baffling, erratic young Dutchman at the center of two sensational murders: the puzzling 2005 disappearance in Aruba of Natalee Holloway (he was one of the last people seen with her before her death) and the gruesome slaying of a promising Peruvian business student, Stephany Ramirez, in a Lima hotel. Joran Van der Sloot's chronic lying tripped him up in both crimes. Freed by police due to a lack of evidence in the Holloway case, Van der Sloot is depicted by the authors as arrogant, aggressive, and violent, with a lethal charm and a short fuse which results in Ramirez's death in his hotel room in 2010. This well-detailed book is disturbing and haunting in its revelations of a self-centered cad with a dark side pampered by affluent parents and legal hijinks until his jailing%C2%A0in Peru awaiting trial on the Ramirez matter. 8 pages of color photos. (July)