Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith was an American novelist and short story writer, born in Fort Worth, Texas, on 19 January 1921. She grew up in New York and began publishing in her twenties. Later she spent most of her life in Europe, living in England, France and finally Switzerland, where she died on 4 February 1995.

Highsmith is best known for psychological suspense fiction. Her stories are rarely puzzles about who committed a crime. They look closely at guilt, obsession, and the unsettling ease with which ordinary people can slip into wrongdoing. Her most famous creation is Tom Ripley, a charming and amoral opportunist who appears in five novels. She also wrote short stories and a notable novel of love between two women, published first under a pseudonym. Her cool, precise prose and morally uneasy worlds have influenced many crime writers and inspired a long line of films.