Exotic Beginning but Mysterious Ending
On my recent trip to Thailand, I visited the Jim Thompson’s store. Jim Thompson was known as The Silk King for revitalizing the Thai silk industry. He pioneered Thai silk which became well known globally. Jim was one of the most famous Americans living in Asia back in the 1950s and 1960s. His passion and love for his adopted country intrigued me. On my way back home to New York, I bought The Unsolved Mystery, written by William Warren about Jim Thompson.
The Unsolved Mystery is well written and it follows the exotic life of Jim Thompson in chronological order. Jim was an American man who left everything behind in New York to begin a new life in Thailand. He was a larger-than-life figure. Before settling in Thailand, Jim worked in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II. How he ended up in Thailand and started a successful Thai silk business is inspiring. His well-respected social status in Thailand got him many friends — both good and bad. The Unsolved Mystery narrates the difficulties of Jim’s journey living in Asia, his beautifully well-built house (now a well-known museum in Bangkok), endless glamorous dinner parties including foreign dignitaries and socialites, and his love affairs with married women. The book offers a great deal of information about Jim Thompson and his life experience in Thailand.
Unfortunately, what The Unsolved Mystery cannot offer is the answer to Jim’s disappearance on the afternoon of Easter Sunday in 1967. Jim was invited to spend some time off with his close friends in Malaysia’s Cameron Highlands, a very remote place away from his busy life in Bangkok. Jim was drawn to the many thick jungle trails and went for a walk by himself after lunch and never returned. Jim was 61 when he disappeared. The intense search by both Malaysian and Thai police as well as by the US embassy turned unsuccessful. This became known as one of the largest land searches in Southeast Asia's history. The writer showcases many theories about Jim’s disappearance but what happened to Jim Thompson will ultimately remain a mystery. Readers will have to wonder endlessly if the search for Jim Thompson was negligent, or if the jungle was too thick for a thorough search to be effective. Then again, was Jim Thompson kidnapped? At the end, your guess is as good as mine!
I will leave my review with what the writer quotes of W. Somerset Maugham. “I have an idea that some men are born out of their due place. Accident has cast them amid certain surroundings, but they always have a nostalgia for a home they know not. Perhaps it is this sense of strangeness that sends men far and wide in search of something permanent to which they may attach themselves...Sometimes a man hits upon a place to which he mysteriously feels that he belongs.”
