The Blunderer by Patricia Highsmith. New York. 1954. Coward McCann.  277 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Rus Anderson.

  
DESCRIPTION - Patricia Highsmith, the author of Strangers on a Train, has woven another tense suspense novel. Again, an engrossing plot and realistic characters combine to make rich entertainment for the connoisseur. The bus stopped; a woman got off and the next day the papers carried the story of her brutal murder. The item was a brief one, but it caught the attention of Walter Stockhouse, a young New York lawyer. Perhaps the crime had stemmed from the desire of a husband to rid himself of an unwanted wife? It was an interesting theory - absorbing to the point of bringing Walter to Melchior Kimmel's bookshop. But Walter, too, had an unwanted wife, a wife who was taking a trip by bus. The situation was similar too similar when Clara Stockhouse's body is discovered at the bottom of a cliff and a bystander identifies Walter as the man who was at the bus stop. The web of circumstantial evidence tightens as a determined detective pursues the husbands of the two women.

Born in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1921, Patricia Highsmith spent much of her adult life in Switzerland and France. Educated at Barnard College, where she studied English, Latin, and Greek, she had her first novel, STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, published in 1950 and saw it quickly made into a movie by Alfred Hitchcock. Despite receiving little recognition in her native land during her lifetime, Highsmith, the author of more than twenty books, won the O. Henry Memorial Award, The Edgar Allan Poe Award, Le Grand Prix de Littérarure Policière, and the Award of the Crime Writers’ Association of Great Britain. She died in Switzerland in 1995, and her literary archives are maintained in Berne.

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