In fact, if you’re already well-acquainted with Highsmith’s Ripley novels, Deep Water is a good place to start exploring her larger body of work (I also highly recommend The Cry of the Owl (1962)). Highsmith was prolific, and her novels are charged with her unique brand of skin-crawling suspense. He’s not one to be sympathised with, and yet you’d always rather learn his next move than see him be made answerable for his actions. The gap between how he sees himself, how he believes himself to be perceived by the good folk of Little Wesley and how he actually appears is chilling. But what starts as a joke soon turns serious, and Vic begins to wonder what it would take to get away with murder.ĭeep Water is classic Highsmith. When he learns one of her past lovers has died under mysterious circumstances, he begins a rumour that he killed the man to scare off other suitors. However, she grows increasingly bold, parading her beaus at parties and balls for all the town to see. When she begins to take lovers-all younger, attractive men-Vic turns a blind eye. However, in recent years his wife’s interest has begun to wander. He has a fine house, a young daughter he dotes on and a beautiful, charming wife. Independently wealthy, he runs a boutique printing press and is a popular and respected member of the Little Wesley township. In Deep Water (1957) Vic Van Allen seemingly has it all. However, beneath this finely polished surface seep the irritations, perversions and desires that were always going to make the realisation of that dream impossible. From the outside her characters appear, or at least believe they appear, to be living a perfect life-the post-war American Dream. Like her most famous character, Tom Ripley, Highsmith is something of an aesthete, and her characters are almost always well dressed and would never let something as bothersome as murder get in the way of cocktail hour or a dinner party at the neighbours’. While most of her novels have what she describes as ‘slow, even tranquil beginnings,’ there’s guaranteed to be a body count before too long. Her narratives are geared to unsettle, bringing readers up close and personal with what she calls her ‘hero-criminals’-charming psychopaths, peeping toms, men caught between a rock and a hard place and quick to part with their moral scruples. Perhaps most famous for her novels Strangers on a Train (1950) and The Talented Mr Ripley (1955), Highsmith crafts suspense like no other. If you are yet to enjoy the thrill of a Patricia Highsmith story, you’re really missing out. Margot McGovern dives into a lesser known Highsmith.
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