Synopses & Reviews
With the acclaim for , more film projects in production, and two biographies forthcoming, expatriate legend Patricia Highsmith would be shocked to see that she has finally arrived in her homeland. Throughout her career, Highsmith brought a keen literary eye and a genius for plumbing the psychopathic mind to more than thirty works of fiction, unparalleled in their placid deviousness and sardonic humor. With deadpan accuracy, she delighted in creating true sociopaths in the guise of the everyday man or woman. Now, one of her finest works is again in print: , a masterpiece of noir fantasy. With this novel, Highsmith revels in eliciting the unsettling psychological forces that lurk beneath the surface of everyday contemporary life. "For eliciting the menace that lurks in familiar surroundings, there's no one like Patricia Highsmith."-- "Highsmith's novels are peerlessly disturbing ....bad dreams that keep us thrashing for the rest of the night."--
Review
"By now everybody's heard of the Ripley series by Patricia Highsmith The Talented Mr. Ripley and its four sequels but other books by this author are equally deserving of a look. My favorite of the non-Ripley novels is A Suspension of Mercy, which has a simple, amusing premise: a mystery writer wants to know what it would be like to murder someone, his wife, so he can write about it. While his wife is away, therefore, he acts out the murder, burying an old, rolled up carpet in a secluded spot, for example, as if it in fact contained her body. This being a Highsmith novel, the husband's deceit and stubbornness land him in trouble. As usual, Highsmith's writing is deceptively simple. She can describe the most mundane of activities and have you sitting at the edge of your seat, fearful of what will happen next." Debra, a Powells.com customer in North Haven, CT (recommend a book)
Review
"Six years after her death, Patricia Highsmith is in the middle of a renaissance." Publishers Weekly
Review
"Highsmith's novels are peerlessly disturbing....bad dreams that keep us thrashing for the rest of the night." The New Yorker
Review
"For eliciting the menace that lurks in familiar surroundings, there's no one like Patricia Highsmith." Time
Review
"An atmosphere of nameless dread, of unspeakable foreboding, permeates every page of Patricia Highsmith, and there's nothing quite like it." Boston Globe
Review
"[Highsmith] has an uncanny feeling for the rhythms of terror." Times Literary Supplement (London)
Synopsis
A major new reissue of the work of a classic noir novelist.
About the Author
Patricia Highsmith (1921-1995) was the author of more than twenty novels, including Strangers on a Train, The Price of Salt,