In the remote Bocas del Toro, Panama, William Dathan Holbert - known as 'Wild Bill' - is currently awaiting trial for the murder of five fellow American expats. Wild Bill's first victims were the Brown family, who lived on a remote island in the area's Darklands. There, Holbert turned their home into drinking den called the 'Jolly Roger Social Club', using booze and drug fuelled parties to get to know the ex-pat community. With so many in Panama living under assumed names or desperate to leave their old lives behind, people really do sometimes just disappear, and Holbert used that to his advantage.
Nick Foster has unique access to the story having interviewed Holbert in prison and thoroughly researched his life. The Jolly Roger Social Club is an eye-opening read, revealing Holbert to be an apathetic, selfish character, willing to kill to live in a lifestyle he had become accustomed to. Foster also weaves through the story of Panama - a gateway country which is in itself a paradox, a seeming paradise with a sinister underbelly.
