The Talented Mr. Ripley

Patricia Highsmith

Jun 2008 · W. W. Norton & Company

About this ebook

An American classic and the inspiration for the new Netflix series.

It’s here, in the first volume of Patricia Highsmith’s five-book Ripley series, that we are introduced to the suave Tom Ripley, a young striver seeking to leave behind his past as an orphan bullied for being a “sissy.” Newly arrived in the heady world of Manhattan, Ripley meets a wealthy industrialist who hires him to bring his playboy son, Dickie Greenleaf, back from gallivanting in Italy. Soon Ripley’s fascination with Dickie’s debonair lifestyle turns obsessive as he finds himself enraged by Dickie’s ambivalent affections for Marge, a charming American dilettante, and Ripley begins a deadly game. “Sinister and strangely alluring” (Mark Harris, Entertainment Weekly) The Talented Mr. Ripley serves as an unforgettable introduction to this smooth confidence man, whose talent for self-invention is as unnerving—and unnervingly revealing of the American psyche—as ever.

Ratings and reviews

"I'm going to enjoy what I've got while it lasts." ~ Tom Ripley And with that outlook, I read this book just waiting for the proverbial "other shoe to drop."

Tom is so loveable despite his crimes. Highsmith paints a world of suspense that could easily be modern

Paid for this book and it just says it that it can't display.

About the author

Patricia Highsmith (1921–1995) was the author of more than twenty novels, including Strangers on a Train, The Price of Salt and The Talented Mr. Ripley, as well as numerous short stories.