Crime fiction is a massively popular genre, but I generally avoid it. I made an exception for this 1955 psychological thriller because it has become such a well-established classic: it won a number of awards, it resulted in four sequels, and it has been the subject of many radio, television and film adaptations. I thoroughly enjoyed it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is an unusual crime novel in that the point of view is that of the criminal himself and, somewhat implausibly and certainly audaciously, he manages to deceive just about everybody. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Twenty-five year old American Thomas Ripley, a loner with seemingly no morals and dubious sexuality, is above all a fantasist and the chief object of his fantasies is a fellow American, now resident in Italy, one Dickie Greenleaf.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ripley is prepared to take incredible risks to fulfil his infatuation: “It was as if he were really inviting trouble , and couldn’t control himself.” <\/em>We learn that: “His stories were good because he imagined them intensely , so intensely that he came to believe them.”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Highsmith clearly chose the name of her protagonist quite deliberately. Ripley’s Believe It Ot Not! was a newspaper panel that highlighted strange and unusual events and this novel is imbued with strange and unusual occurrences, the credibility of which is mooted over by a range of supporting characters. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The author plays with the emotions of the reader: we admire Ripley’s ingenuity, we share his fear, but do we want him to be caught or not? <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Crime fiction is a massively popular genre, but I generally avoid it. I made an exception for this 1955 psychological thriller because it has become such a well-established classic: it won a number of awards, it resulted in four sequels, and it has been the subject of many radio, television and film adaptations. I thoroughly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cultural-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29432"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29432\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29434,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29432\/revisions\/29434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}