Product details
Biographical note
Patricia Highsmith was born in Fort Worth, Texas in 1921 but moved to new York when she was six. In her senior year she edited the college magazine, having decided to become a writer at the age of sixteen. Her first novel Strangers on a Train, was made into a famous film by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951. Patricia Highsmith died in Locarno, Switzerland in 1995. Her last novel Small g: A Summer Idyll was published posthumously just over a month later.Ripley, amoral, hedonistic and charming, is a genuinely original creation
Daily Telegraph
As haunting and harrowing a study of a schizophrenic murder as paper will bear. A glittering addition to the meagre ranks of people who make books that you really can't put down
Sunday Times
Precisely plotted, stylishly written and kept alert by an icy wit. Streets ahead of the conventional thriller: a cool little classic of its kind
Evening Standard
An outstanding thriller which has deservedly become a classic
Spectator
Beautifully escapist, utterly thrilling
Healthy, *Summer Reads of 2021*
Charm is the perfect disguise
Tom Ripley is drifting through life in 1950s New York, a young man with quick wits, no prospects and a talent for imitation. When he’s sent to Italy to persuade a wealthy heir, Dickie Greenleaf, to return home, the trip feels like deliverance: sunlit villas, boats on the bay, and friendship with the kind of people who barely notice men like him.
But fascination becomes fixation. As Tom sinks further into Dickie’s world, he begins to see another version of himself reflected there: richer, freer, adored. Ripley soon discovers just how easy it is to erase one life and step into another.
‘The No. 1 Greatest Crime Writer’ The Times
‘Ripley … is a genuinely original creation’ Daily Telegraph