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

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)