27/365: Ripley’s Game by Patricia Highsmith

Ripley's Game by Patricia Highsmith Rating: ★★★ Series: Ripliad #3 Publication Date: January 1, 1974 Genre: suspense, thriller Pages: 274 ReRead?: No Project: Project 365 With its sinister humor and genius plotting, Ripley's Game is an enduring portrait of a compulsive, sociopathic American antihero. 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.

Tom detested murder unless it was absolutely necessary.

First of all, this quote is not true. Tom does not detest murder, and, in fact, at times he seems to positively relish it. Second of all, is Tom Ripley the luckiest sociopath ever conceived of and set to paper? He has dodged, at this point, an untold number of bullets, both literal and metaphorical.

Somewhere there must be a police force that is up to dealing with the talented Mr. Ripley.

Anyway, this is the third book in Highsmith’s Ripliad, a series of 5 books featuring Tom Ripley, who is a thief, a sociopath, a chameleon, and an all around moral monster. In this one, Tom plays cat-and-mouse with Jonathan Trevanny, an American who has offended Ripley at a birthday party by being decidedly lukewarm about meeting him. This leads to Ripley engaging in a lengthy plot to involve Trevanny in a spot of light murder in retaliation for the perceived social slight.

As is usually the case, anyone who becomes embroiled in Ripley’s shenanigans ends up paying a much higher price than Ripley himself.

Highsmith’s books are noteworthy for the visceral intensity of her descriptions of violence. No one that I can think of is able to, without using graphic descriptions of blood and gore, bring the reader into the physical reality of murder. It’s both sickening and remarkable.

I’m just not sure how believable the central theory of the book is: that Ripley has managed to drag a heretofore upright citizen into very nefarious – and even murderous – doings. Not everyone is utterly amoral, after all.

I have the fourth book in the Ripliad,  The Boy Who Followed Ripley, but not the fifth, Ripley Under Water.