The Ripley novels of Patricia Highsmith
The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith. New York. 1955. Coward-McCann. 252 pages. hardcover.
Tom Ripley is my favorite psychopath. Even though he is frighteningly amoral, it becomes hard not to root for him, even as he murders his best friend, engages in art forgery (committing a murder to cover it up), plays with the lives of others simply because he feels he was snubbed (and murders some of them of course), indulges in a lot of sexually ambiguous behavior, and engages in cat-and-mouse games with those who cross his path.
FROM THE PUBLISHER -
He was young and handsome with expensive tastes and no money. But he had a latent talent for crime and one summer in Italy he thought he saw a way of turning his skill into a tidy little fortune. It was a small matter of murdering his best friend; then assuming his identity and along with it, his carefree, money-cushioned life. A beautifully simple foolproof plan. it worked perfectly without a single hitch. Until one day one woman began to suspect the truth. And the talented Mr. Ripley learned that murder was just the bare beginning of evil.
Ripley Under Ground by Patricia Highsmith. Garden City. 1970. Doubelday. 275 pages.
FROM THE PUBLISHER -
This subtle, bone-chilling novel by an internationally renowned master of psychological suspense describes an amoral young man’s efforts to protect his interest in an elaborate, highly profitable art-forgery scheme-and the anxiety and terror that build as he is forced to take more and more drastic actions. ROTJEY UNDER GROUND is written with the immense skill and insight critics have acclaimed in Patricia Highsmith’s earlier novels. ‘Low-key, subtle, and profound,’ wrote J. M. Eldelstein in The New Republic, adding, ‘Her work should be among the classics of the genre.’ England’s The Spectator has praised her ‘dry wit and scrupulous psychological realism.’ And The New York Times Book Review called her work ‘often illuminating and always compelling.’
Ripley's Game by Patricia Highsmith. New York. May 1974. Knopf. 267 pages. 0394490053.
FROM THE PUBLISHER -
RIPLEY’S GAME brings back one of Miss Highsmith’s most intriguing protagonists - the energetic, amoral, overcivilized, undersensitized American, Tom Ripley, here playing dangerously with the fates of a mild-mannered Englishman and his appealing French wife. A chance meeting and a casual English snub cause Ripley to devise a plot that involves, finally, several murders, the Mafia, and a lot of money. With all her accustomed skill and psychological insight, Miss Highsmith reveals the peculiar seesaw thinking of those who commit deliberate murder, as the long chain of events set off by Ripley’s game ironically causes Ripley to become more feeling and human even as his victims become more ambiguous and morally unsure.
The Boy Who Followed Ripley by Patricia Highsmith. Philadelphia. 1980. Lippincott & Crowell. 0690019114. 292 pages.
FROM THE PUBLISHER -
Patricia Highsmith, internationally acclaimed master of psychological suspense fiction, has written a deceptively quiet new novel as intricate and haunting as a shattered mirror. Moving from a luxurious Parisian country home to the glittery sexual underworld of Berlin to the elegant grounds of a multimillionaire’s Maine estate, THE BOY WHO FOLLOWED RIPLEY is a tender and terrifying exploration of trust and friendship between a young man with a guilty conscience and an older one who has learned to erase his own. Tom Ripley, expatriate American homme d’affaires, is leading a pleasant and unexceptional life with his rich French wife outside of Paris, until he befriends a sixteen-year-old American boy who appears in a local bar-cafe. As the boy’s true identity comes to light, Ripley finds himself harboring fugitive Frank Pierson, who declares himself responsible for the recent highly suspicious death of his crippled multimillionaire father. Should Tom Ripley believe him? In a tangled web of friendship and dependence, Ripley grows increasingly protective of the troubled youth. Chasing across Europe to Berlin, they evade a detective hired by the Pierson family, but not a band of kidnappers, who snatch Frank and demand an enormous ransom. After Ripley manages a daring rescue of the boy from one of Berlin’s hottest night spots, the two return to Paris and then to the Pierson family estate in Kennebunkport, Maine, where their mutual trust and affection are tested in a desperate, devastating confrontation. Writing with a style and perceptive-ness often compared to the work of Graham Greene and John LeCarre, Patricia Highsmith gives us a supremely absorbing tale of love and hate, trust and fear-and life and death.
Ripley Under Water by Patricia Highsmith. New York. 1992. Knopf. 309 pages. 0679416773. October 1992.
FROM THE PUBLISHER -
For more than four decades, Patricia Highsmith has developed her unique mastery of suspense-not least in her renowned cycle of novels featuring Tom Ripley. Now, with the fifth in that series and her first new novel in five years, she demonstrates yet again her ability, as Graham Greene wrote, ‘to create a world of her own, a world claustrophobic and irrational which we enter each time with a sense of personal danger. ’ Though his talent for evil has in no way diminished, Tom Ripley has aged, even mellowed. Now leading the good life in the French countryside, complete with chic wife and devoted housekeeper, he is more interested in his wine stores than the bloodstains on the cellar floor. Then a meddlesome American couple takes up residence in the same village. Though at first the Pritchards seem a mere curiosity, their taste as execrable as their manners, they are annoyingly well informed about incidents in Ripley’s past and almost smug about flaunting their knowledge. This, of course, disturbs the tranquility of the charmed, cultured life for which Tom has worked so hard, and he has no choice but to bedevil the Pritchards in return. Thus begins a spirited, sophisticated game of cat and mouse that leads to Tangier and London and back again, to the pond behind the Pritchards’ house. It is Ripley at his most suave and devious - and Patricia Highsmith in peak form. For her aficionados, RIPLEY UNDER WATER is utterly essential - and for readers new to her work, a spectacular introduction to ‘a natural novelist’ (John Gross, The New York Times). ‘Patricia Highsmith’s pet psychopath, Tom Ripley, began his career in THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY in 1955. when the rich Greenleaf family sent him to Italy to bring their wayward son Dickie back to the States. What Tom actually did was club Dickie to death in a fit of pique, lose the body at sea, and forge Dickie’s will in his favor. Tom got away with this, and has been getting away with murder ever since. ’ - The Independent (London). ‘For some obscure reason, one of our greatest modernist writers, Patricia Highsmith, has been thought of in her own land as a writer of thrillers. She is both. She is certainly one of the most interesting writers of this dismal century. ’ - Gore Vidal. ‘Patricia Highsmith is something more than a first-class novelist. She represents a hope for the future of civilization. ’ - Auberon Waugh. ‘Patricia Highsmith ‘s novels are disturbing. ’ - Terrence Rafferty, The New Yorker.
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.