TH - 670 | Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith

Here we encounter Guy Haines and Charles Anthony Bruno, passengers on the same train. But while Guy is a successful architect in the midst of a divorce, Bruno turns out to be a sadistic psychopath who manipulates Guy into swapping murders with him. “Some people are better off dead,” Bruno remarks, “like your wife and my father, for instance.”

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TH - 259/1 | The Talented Mr. Ripley (Ripley #1) by Patricia Highsmith

Since his debut in 1955, Tom Ripley has evolved into the ultimate bad boy sociopath, influencing countless novelists and filmmakers. In this first novel, we are introduced to suave, handsome Tom Ripley: a young striver, newly arrived in the heady world of Manhattan in the 1950s. A product of a broken home, branded a "sissy" by his dismissive Aunt Dottie, Ripley becomes enamored of the moneyed world of his new friend, Dickie Greenleaf.

This fondness turns obsessive when Ripley is sent to Italy to bring back his libertine pal but grows enraged by Dickie's ambivalent feelings for Marge, a charming American dilettante.

A dark reworking of Henry James's The Ambassadors, The Talented Mr. Ripley—is up to his tricks in a 90s film and also Rene Clement's 60s film, "Purple Noon."

ID: TH - 259/1

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TH - 259/2 | Ripley Under Ground (Ripley #2) by Patricia Highsmith

It's been six years since Ripley murdered Dickie Greenleaf and inherited his money. Now, in Ripley Under Ground (1970), he lives in a beautiful French villa, surrounded by a world-class art collection and married to a pharmaceutical heiress. All seems serene in Ripley's world until a phone call from London shatters his peace.

An art forgery scheme he set up a few years ago is threatening to unravel: a nosy American is asking questions and Ripley must go to London to put a stop to it. In this second Ripley novel, Patricia Highsmith offers a mesmerizing and disturbing tale in which Ripley will stop at nothing to preserve his tangle of lies.

ID: TH - 259/2

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TH - 259/3 | Ripley's Game (Ripley #3) by Patricia Highsmith

Living on his posh French estate with his elegant heiress wife, Tom Ripley, on the cusp of middle age, is no longer the striving comer of The Talented Mr. Ripley. Having accrued considerable wealth through a long career of crime—forgery, extortion, serial murder—Ripley still finds his appetite unquenched and longs to get back in the game.

In Ripley's Game, first published in 1974, Patricia Highsmith's classic chameleon relishes the opportunity to simultaneously repay an insult and help a friend commit a crime—and escape the doldrums of his idyllic retirement. This third novel in Highsmith's series is one of her most psychologically nuanced—particularly memorable for its dark, absurd humor—and was hailed by critics for its ability to manipulate the tropes of the genre. With the creation of Ripley, one of literature's most seductive sociopaths, Highsmith anticipated the likes of Norman Bates and Hannibal Lecter years before their appearance.

ID: TH - 259/3

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TH - 259/4 | The Boy Who Followed Ripley (Ripley #4) by Patricia Highsmith

Tom Ripley meets a young American runaway who has a dark secret that he is desperate to hide. Soon this unlikely pair is drawn into the seamy underworld of Berlin and a shocking kidnapping. In this masterful thriller, Highsmith shatters our perceptions of her most famous creation by letting us glimpse a more compassionate side of this amoral charmer.

"Ripley is an unmistakable descendant of Gatsby, that 'penniless young man without a past' who will stop at nothing." — Frank Rich, New York Times Magazine.

ID: TH - 259/4

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TH - 259/5 | Ripley Under Water (Ripley #5) by Patricia Highsmith

Tom Ripley is settled into his estate in the French countryside, quietly enjoying his gardening and planning a trip to North Africa with his beautiful wife. But an odd, vulgar American couple is lurking about the village—and they seem to recognize him. After a string of strange coincidences, Ripley must deploy all of his cruel talents to protect himself and hide a deed from his past.

Ripley Under Water (1991) is Patricia Highsmith's final Ripley novel, and one of her most deliciously thrilling and terrifying.

ID: TH - 259/5

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