The Bigamist: The True Story of a Husband's Ultimate Betrayal [Paperback]

Mary Turner Thomson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 6, 2008

In April 2006, Mary Turner Thomson received a call that blew her life apart. The woman on the other end of the line told her that Will Jordan, Mary’s husband and the father of her two younger children, had been married to her for 14 years and they had five children together. The Bigamist is the shocking true story of how one man manipulated an intelligent, independent woman, conning her out of £200,000 and leaving her to bring up the children he claimed he could never have. It’s a story we all think could never happen to us, but this shameless con man has been doing the same thing to various other women for at least 27 years, spinning a tangled web of lies and deceit to cover his tracks. How far would you go to help the man you love? How far would he go to deceive you? And what would you do when you found out it was all a lie?

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Mary Turner Thomson was brought up in Edinburgh and worked as a marketing consultant, business adviser and motivational trainer. A proud mother of three children, she is now rebuilding her life.

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Mainstream Publishing (May 6, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1845963474
• ISBN-13: 978-1845963477
• Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 0.6 x 7.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (36 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #389,939 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Mary Turner Thomson lives and works in Scotland, UK. She worked as a marketing consultant, business adviser and motivational trainer until discovering that her husband and partner of six years was in fact a bigamist and con man. Instead of allowing the experience to knock her down, she used it to write her first book THE OTHER MRS JORDAN, which was then republished and updated in 2007 under the new name THE BIGAMIST. Now a full time author she has another book out called TRADING PLACES and is working on several projects for publication in 2010.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Tale of a Persuasive Parasite, February 10, 2010

By 

Dr. R. W. Leslie "Bob Leslie" (Glasgow) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Bigamist: The True Story of a Husband's Ultimate Betrayal (Paperback)

A strange and powerful story which I read straight through till the wee small hours. Absolutely fascinating! The incredible complexity of Will's plotting demonstrates more than just his basic contempt for the rest of humanity, after all, he must have realised he'd be found out sooner or later based on his previous scams. It's as if he wanted to inflict maximum hurt on the women involved; as if he were seeking revenge for something?

When I first read the blurb on Amazon, I admit to wondering, just a little, how one could be taken in by the whole CIA agent story and all that flowed from it, but his elaborate attention to detail and the way in which others were enrolled to support the story made it clear that the author was faced with such an overwhelming preponderance of "evidence" that she had little choice but to believe it. Jordan is clearly an actor of Oscar-worthy ability.

Once the foundation had been established, the familiar control mechanisms that underpin most types of relationship abuse had something to work on: the insistence on trust, the isolation from others, the erosion of independence, the demands for emotional (and, in MTT's case, financial) investment that make one feel that while it may be a shipwreck, it's YOUR shipwreck, you've paid for it, and you'll cling to it as it goes down. Even towards the end, Mary Turner Thomson struggled to believe in a chimaera, because it owed her the validation of having been worth it - a bill that would never be paid.

What I, and, I'm sure, other readers, would like to know is: who constituted his back-up team? To a certain extent, he played his women off against each other, but someone must have been helping him set up his intricate deceptions. And to what extent were his family involved?

A strange side-effect of reading the book was to wonder how I could possibly validate myself. The positive aspects that Will manifested are close enough to my own personality to be disturbing. I appreciate that that is because, to be effective, the sociopath has to be a good mimic, but how do the rest of us demonstrate that we're the real deal? The Bigamist: The True Story of a Husband's Ultimate Betrayal

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating tale of the truth gleaned from the lies, August 27, 2008

By 

Boo - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Bigamist: The True Story of a Husband's Ultimate Betrayal (Paperback)

The most shocking aspect to this true-life tale is that Will Jordan has absolutely no remorse, compassion, or guilt - his lies were clearly so beguiling because no sane person would ever suspect anyone would go to such unbelievable lengths of sustained deception. Read this book then tell everyone you know about what happened to these women (for there are multiple victims of this crime and Mary TT tells more than her own story) and send them out to buy it, for the reader recognises that no one is immune to the workings of a sociopath. I was fortunate enough to meet the author recently, and thankfully she has emerged from what she describes as the prison this man kept her in and is rebuilding her life. She is a confident, witty and intelligent woman and one of the best things to come from this brutal experience is that telling the stories that had been previously kept hidden has led to her new career and her talent is now being harnessed as a writer. Looking forward to the next book Mary.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars surprisingly good, December 5, 2011

By 

groupworker (Midwest United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Bigamist: The True Story of a Husband's Ultimate Betrayal (Paperback)

What a crazy true story. Reads like a soap opera, hard to believe. Yet Mary's sincerity and vulnerabilities. make this a compelling read. How might each of us irrationally believe what we want to believe? Mary's book provides a few lessons at best and at the least it is well written and interesting.