Life of Pi tranquilizer darts while her cub escapes hiding in a bush. Parker names the cub Thirsty after his enthusiasm when drinking from a nearby river. The paperwork that accompanies the shipment of the two tigers to Pi's family's zoo in Pondicherry states that the cub's name is "Richard Parker" and the hunter's given name is "Thirsty" and his surname is "None Given", due to a mix-up with the names. Pi's father finds the story so amusing that they continue to call the tiger "Richard Parker". Brian Bethune of "Maclean's" describes "Life of Pi" as a "head-scratching combination of dense religious allegory,
The Eyes of the Tiger style. However, since at least 1973, later editions of this novel were rewritten in first-person narrative style. The story is set in September 1965. Carter is in Geneva, Switzerland on Mission Tiger – a plan to steal a large gold and ruby statue of a tiger from Hermann Göring’s private Swiss bank vault. Former SS General Max Rader and Imperial Japanese Army Colonel Shikoku Hondo are also on their way to steal the tiger. The vault has been locked using a French key – a device that requires two matching key components to be inserted together – one half of