Stranger on a Train (50 Edition)

It's hard to describe the feeling you get upon finishing a Patricia Highsmith novel. You're not sure whether to believe her. However, she may be the most insightful person around. Is everyone truly capable of murder? After reading Highsmith, one worries that they are. No one brings out the tangled malevolence of seemingly everyday characters better.

It's no surprise that Hitchcock picked this story for a screen adaptation in 1951. With its slow-building tension, it is perfect material for the master of suspense. But, as is the case with most book-vs.-movie comparisons, the novel wins out. Highsmith's scalpel-precise language and complex psychological development twist an ordinary encounter between two strangers into an disquieting tale of obsession and peril.

The book begins with two average men and a chance meeting on a train. Guy Haines, who is hoping to finalize the divorce from his estranged wife, falls into conversation with the ostensibly normal Charles Bruno. With the help of a bottle of scotch, lips get looser and talk turns to betrayal, hatred, and murder. "Some people are better off dead," states Bruno, "like your wife and my father, for instance." Soon Guy becomes disenchanted with his companion and assumes that once he's off the train he will be free of Charles Bruno and his unsettling ideas.

Bruno, on the other hand, believes an agreement has been reached with his new-found friend. He kills Guy's wife, then looks to Guy to fulfill his end of the deal. As the story progresses, it becomes obvious that Bruno is deeply disturbed. Though his feelings of friendship are sincere, Bruno is obsessed with Guy. There is no end to his sinister inclinations.

Throughout, Highsmith has the reader guessing the capabilities of her darkly imagined characters. Guy Haines appears to be John Q. Public — an up-and-coming architect engaged to a beautiful, intelligent socialite — certainly not the profile of a murderer. But, Highsmith instills doubt the deeper she delves into the mind of Guy. Under the pressure of an obsessive lunatic, Guy is riven with guilt and obligation; his resolve weakens. This is Highsmith's genius. She is able to convince the reader that Guy — and therefore any decent, middle-class citizen — could be driven to murder.

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