Product Description
A major new reissue of the work of a classic noir novelist. With the acclaim for The Talented Mr. Ripley, 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: Strangers on a Train, Highsmith's first novel and the source for Alfred Hitchcock's classic 1953 film. With this novel, Highsmith revels in eliciting the unsettling psychological forces that lurk beneath the surface of everyday contemporary life.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 32 reviews)

Tension to Perfection

The Fiction Writer should put tension on every page of a novel, in every scene, and select every word to forward that tension. Patricia Highsmith's debut novel, Strangers on a Train, could be a textbook to these principles. From the first line, "The train tore along with an angry irregular rhythm." she keeps the reader off balance and anticipating with dread every new scene. It's fantastic.

On a train, Guy Haines sits next to Charles Anthony Bruno. Bruno forcefully intrudes on architect Guy's life and then proposes a unique solution for Guy's marital quandary, Bruno will kill Miriam, Guy's wife if Guy kills Bruno's father; neither of them will have a motive, and the police will have no reason to suspect either of them. Then Guy can marry Anne Morton, the woman he loves and Guy can get his inheritance. Perfect, brilliant, and insane.

The true plot isn't in this scenario, however. The true plot is in Guy feeling trapped by circumstance, seeing half the plan realized and then being forced to comply, to murder, to embrace the idea after initially rejecting it, and then wracked with guilt over all the turns and twists in this complex noir story. The true plot is Guy searching to moralize his deed. It's Guy reaching for his soul.

Hitchcock missed the mark with this one. The movie was good, but is only a shadow of the book's well-crafted tale.

- CV Rick
January 30, 2008

Powerful, rich with suspense.

Strangers on a Train is the debut novel of the highly acclaimed Patricia Highsmith. And what a gut wrenching, suspense saturated debut novel it is.

Guy Haines is an up and coming architect who meets the malevolent and seriously disturbed Charles Bruno on a train. Guy unwisely reveals a little too much about his personal life to Bruno and subsequently finds himself a party to murder most foul. The psychologic torment Guy undergoes because of his involvement in this nefarious crime just leaps from the pages of this book and slaps the reader right in the face.

The story takes place circa. 1950, yet I couldn't help but think of certain aspects of the book as being more characteristic of the 1920s and its anything goes, Jazz Age mentality. Especially when it comes to the the high flying Charles Bruno and his uninhibited lifestyle.

Strangers on a Train is an intricately crafted psychological thriller that is suspense filled and emotionally jarring. An oustanding novel worthy of a 5 star rating. Highly recommended.
May 21, 2007

early highsmith

i'd hesitated when it came to reading this book. like everyonelse i'd seen the hitchcock movie and i wasn't sure i wanted to deal with the original.the book is good but my reticence was justified.this is early middling highsmith.it's strangely"girlish".given highsmiths misogyny,that is surprising.it's also too cozily bourgeois.no i'm not a bourgeois basher!but there are points in this book where you can't wait for highsmith to whip out here nasty acid tongue and it just does'nt happen.i almost cringed while reading the description of anne's father making mint juleps.although i must admit i made a mint julep that night. it's with CRY OF THE OWL and THE TALENTED MR.RIPLEY that highsmith becomes highmith.you still see it as late as PEOPLE WHO KNOCK ON THE DOOR,with its marvelous biliousness and the abrasive cantankouresness of FOUND ON THE STREET.STRANGERS probably hurt highsmiths career precisely by being such a sucess so early on. it is a thriller -crime novel and probably lead to the typing of highsmith as a genre novelist.in reality it's one of the few books she wrote that neatly fits the genre. i suspect that she was hyped as a "master of suspense".one can only imagine the poor reader who was looking for a masterpiece of suspense reading EDITHS DIARY.even RIPLEY and CRY OF-her masterpieces-aren'nt really thrillers.they are simply very good novels written by a writer who was one of americas best.crime,thrills,even some mystery were not to be disdained but they were mediums of expression not the essence of the novels.SRANGERS however is a cime suspense novel and a good one.however highsmith evolved beyond this quickly.most readers did'nt.
May 14, 2007

Subtly menacing, every sentence slowly picking at your sanity...

Patricia Highsmith was ahead of her time, constructing the perfect crime novel long before it would truly be appreciated. Sadly she was never as famously accepted as she could have been while still living, but thanks to reprints and reissues her novels are being given a new breath of life. Now I say all of this and I have only had the pleasure of reading one of her novels, but that novel was so articulately perfect that I have nothing but the utmost respect for the late author. `Strangers on a Train' is so brilliantly crafted that I'm racking my brain to find a flaw, a drawback of some sort and the only thing I can muster is that here and there there are some grammatical errors, but other than that...I'm coming up empty handed.

Any fan of the Hitchcock film will immediately understand why the famed late director scooped up the film rights to this novel. The premise alone deserves the reader's utmost respect. Two strangers get wrapped up in the perfect crime that escalates into the most horrific journey into the human psyche.

Up and coming architect Guy Haines is traveling by train to meet his estranged wife Miriam to pursue a divorce. Miriam has given Guy nothing but heartache, nothing but trouble, and his nerves are getting the better of him. What if she refuses the divorce? He has a lot riding on this. He has a big job in the works that could finally make for him the name he's been waiting to make. He also has a wonderful supportive woman, Anne, waiting to give her his hand in marriage. He needs this divorce more now than ever.

Charles Bruno so happens to be traveling on the same train. Bruno is traveling to escape his father, a man he abhors with every fiber in his body. His father has denied him all that he feels he is entitled to, and he's come to loathe him in such a way that his death seems all Bruno can think of. If only his father were out of the picture, if only somehow, someway he could be rid of this horror of a man.

And with that the wheels begin to turn, as Guy meets Bruno and Bruno delves deeply into this man, winning over his trust and then devising a plan which involves a double homicide, the two of them trading off murders. It seems so perfect, Bruno, who has no relation to either Guy or Miriam, kills Miriam to free Guy of his ex and in return Guy murders Bruno's father. Guy immediately dismisses the idea as a sick joke and from that point on does all he can to avoid Bruno. Bruno on the other hand doesn't so easily forget Guy, and he decides to go ahead with the plan whether Guy wants to participate or not, but it's after he's snuffed the life out of Miriam that the trouble really begins.

In order for a plan like this to work the two parties would need to remain separate, distant and out of touch, but Bruno slowly becomes obsessed with Guy, falling in love with him in a way and begins to haunt, stalk and torture (mentally) Guy to the point to sheer insanity. The novel continues to weave Bruno's twisted web and we, the reader, are able to sit back and experience madness at its most effective. Patricia was able to paint this picture so clear that we are left with no feeling other than contentment and pure satisfaction. Yes, this novel plays out differently than the famed film, but that's no reason to disregard the novel altogether. It's worth every word penned!
April 13, 2007

Stinging suspense--one of Highsmith's best

What's interesting is the powerful difference between this novel and Hitchcock's film version. In the novel, Guy Haines is an architect rather than a tennis pro (the film), but this is not the main difference. Without giving anything away, there is a major difference plotwise, and if you read the novel AFTER having seen the film (as I did), your jaw drops open at how big a difference this really is.

While Hitchcock's film is a great cinematic classic, Highsmith's novel is, I think, an even better piece of work overall. She is an absolute master of psychological nuance and digs so deep into the Guy Haines character that the reader is absolutely riveted to the page. So too does she dig into the character of the antagonist, Charles Anthony Bruno, and this as well keeps you turning page after page.

As most people probably know by now, the story is of criss-crossing murders whose idea first emerges when the two main characters meet by chance on a train and eventually Bruno proposes to Haines--after sneakily drawing out the particulars of the latter's family situation--that each kill the one person most in the way of the other person's happiness.

Highsmith's prose is way ahead of its time; the novel was published in 1951 and reads like it could have been published at least 25 years later, if not more. This was, in fact, her first published work.

I dare you to start reading this and put it down for any length of time. You can't.
January 27, 2007

SIMILAR PRODUCTS

The Price of Salt
by Patricia Highsmith, W. W. Norton

The Talented Mr. Ripley, Ripley Under Ground, Ripley's Game (Everyman's Library)
by Patricia Highsmith

Ripley Under Water
by Patricia Highsmith

The Talented Mr. Ripley
by Patricia Highsmith

The Boy Who Followed Ripley: A Novel
by Patricia Highsmith