The Blunderer: A Virago Modern Classic (Virago Modern Classics) - Softcover

Highsmith, Patricia

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0349004528 ISBN 13: 9780349004525

Publisher: Virago Press Ltd, 2015

Synopsis

NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE, A KIND OF MURDER, STARRING PATRICK WILSON AND JESSICA BIEL

By the bestselling author of The Talented Mr Ripley, Carol and Strangers on a Train

''Almost unputdownable. Miss Highsmith writes about men like a spider writing about flies'' OBSERVER

''History will place Highsmith at the top of the pyramid'' A. N. WILSON, DAILY TELEGRAPH

''Peerlessly disturbing . . . bad dreams that keep us thrashing for the rest of the night '' NEW YORKER

For two years, the young, successful and handsome Walter Stackhouse has been a faithful and supportive husband to his wife, Clara. She is distant and neurotic, and Walter finds himself harbouring gruesome fantasies about her demise. Then Clara''s dead body turns up at the bottom of a cliff in a manner uncannily resembling the recent death of a woman named Helen Kimmel who was murdered by her husband. Under the intense scrutiny of the investigation he commits one mistake, then another, until - in true Highsmithian fashion - Walter finds his perfect life derailed. Now Walter is running from the obsessions of the murderer, and the suspicions of the lead cop, not to mention his own increasingly life-threatening blunders.

The Blunderer examines the dark obsessions that lie beneath the surface of seemingly ordinary people. With unerring psychological insight, Patricia Highsmith portrays characters who cross the precarious line separating fantasy from reality.

About this title

About the Author

Patricia Highsmith (1921-1995) was born in Fort Worth, Texas, and moved to New York when she was six. In her senior year, she edited the college magazine, having decided at the age of sixteen to become a writer. Her first novel, Strangers on a Train (1950), was made into a classic film by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951. The Talented Mr Ripley (1955), introduced the fascinating anti-hero Tom Ripley, and was made into an Oscar-winning film in 1999 by Anthony Minghella. Highsmith died in Locarno, Switzerland, in February 1995. Her last novel, Small g: A Summer Idyll, was published posthumously, the same year.

Edition details

• Publisher: Virago Press Ltd
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0349004528
• ISBN 13: 9780349004525
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384