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Library | Item Barcode | Call Number | Material Type | Item Category 1 | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Searching... | PRZS3000001218 | PS3558.I366 R57 1992 | Open Access Book | Creative Book | Searching... |
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Summary
Author Notes
Patricia Highsmith wrote twenty-one novels including "Strangers on a Train" & the "Ripley" series. She died in 1995 in Switzerland, where she resided much of her life.
(Publisher Provided)
Reviews 3
Publisher's Weekly Review
With the chilling, knife-edged subtlety that is her trademark, Highsmith ( Strangers on a Train ; Ripley's Game ) details the civilized life pursued by her sociopath hero Tom Ripley, who here makes his fifth appearance and his first in a dozen years. Now living in the French countryside with his wife, Heloise, Ripley is bothered by an obnoxious American couple who have rented a house nearby and who seem bent on exploring incidents in Ripley's past. With no apparent personal motive, David Pritchard and his wife Janice refer to an American art dealer named Murchison who mysteriously disappeared some years ago after visiting Ripley. Ripley, who had murdered Murchison to prevent the exposure of an art forgery scheme and then dumped his body in a nearby canal, grows increasingly anxious and angry as Pritchard continues to harass him and begins dredging the local canals. Highsmith leads up to her resolution as unsensationally and evenhandedly as she describes Ripley's ordinary days spent tending his dahlias, practicing Schubert on the harpsichord, relishing his meals and looking out tenderly for Heloise and their housekeeper. The perfect gentleman, he is civil, considerate, utterly well mannered--and deadly. Highsmith will make readers look closer at their neighbors, and at themselves. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
/*STARRED REVIEW*/ After a 12-year absence, Highsmith's Tom Ripley returns. There are no other series' heroes quite like Ripley, a sociopath who appreciates culture and thinks nothing of murder for art's sake. In effortless, measured, graceful prose, Highsmith glides her narrative from the French countryside, where Ripley--now married--has settled into an ordered, outwardly idyllic existence, through Morocco, Paris, London, and back to the country. Ripley seems to have forsaken his bloodstained past until he finds himself stalked by a man intent on bringing all the skeletons in the Ripley closet to light. As in the four previous Ripley novels, Highsmith gently nudges the reader into a world where all our shared moral assumptions are ever so slightly moved out of alignment. Ripley is certainly no Hannibal the Cannibal, but while his insinuating brand of evil is less shocking, it is no less disturbing. Highsmith plays brilliantly on her readers' everyday fears, taking what looks like slightly improper behavior from one angle and making from it a very special and very chilling kind of deviant behavior. Highsmith is once again our unfaltering guide through these ambiguous nether regions of good and evil. (Reviewed Sept. 1, 1992)0679416773Peter Robertson
Library Journal Review
Not many mysteries feature a murderer as a protagonist, but Highsmith's popular series featuring the cultivated psychopath Tom Ripley (e.g., The Talented Mr. Ripley, Audio Reviews, LJ 4/1/91) is an exception. In this sortie, Ripley is quietly enjoying his lovely home in the French countryside when it appears his past may be catching up with him. He receives a phone call ostensibly from someone he knows he murdered; and then there are those creepy new neighbors who have ties to some of Ripley's enemies. Well written and charming, this unabridged audiobook is likely to please public library patrons. One caveat: since this is a British production, narrator Geoffrey Matthews must spend much time affecting American accents for Ripley and his nemesis, which may turn off some listeners.-Reilly Reagan, Putnam Cty. Lib., Cookeville, Tenn. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
