Ripley's Game
New York: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, 1993. Soft cover. 8vo. Fine. Item #005304
Soft cover. 282 pp. Fine. Connoisseur of art, harpischord afficionado, gardener extraordinaire, and genius of improvisational murder, the inimitable Tom Ripley finds his complacency shaken when he is scorned at a posh gala. The perpetrator: the mortally ill Jonathan Trevanny, a picture frarmer from a neighbouring village. Now, while any ordinary psychopath might repay the insult with some mild act of retribution, the game Ripley has in mind is far subtler - and infinitely more sinister. A social slight doesn't warrant murder, of course, just a chain of events that may lead to it...Only the superb Patricia Highsmith could give us this sleek and cold-blooded revision of the Book of Job, in which her appalling protagonist plays both God and the Devil - and pulls off both roles with haunting aplomb.
Price: $18.00