The Ideal Man
by Joshua Kurlantzick
Wiley
Farang is a Thai word with a meaning akin to gweilo here. And 20th century Bangkok's most illustrious farang was indisputably a Delaware native son and long-term resident of the capital named Jim Thompson.
Indeed, today his museum-style home remains one of the city's top tourist attractions.
For those familiar with the Thompson story, Joshua Kurlantzick's treatment is both satisfying and frustrating: the former because the author fills in the many blanks in this peculiar life story; the latter because it does not go any further in explaining the American entrepreneur and spy's mysterious disappearance in Malaysia in 1967.
The furthest that The Ideal Man ventures is to vaguely theorise that Thompson was bumped off by a Thai business rival. Yet, with the passage of 45 years and no meaningful leads, Thompson's fateful last solitary walk in the Cameron Highlands is destined to remain a mystery.
Born in 1906, Thompson grew up in a wealthy east coast family and attended Princeton University. He held a dreary but safe office job during the early years of the second world war, before joining the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in 1943, where he was swiftly identified as a capable recruit of high value.
