Synopses & Reviews
The Complete Ripley Novels — a first-time, boxed collection of the entire Ripley series — is a cause for critical and popular celebration. Its publication reflects the fact that Patricia Highsmith, "no more a practitioner of the murder mystery genre...than are Dostoevsky, Faulkner and Camus" (Joan Smith,
Los Angeles Times), has finally entered the American literary canon.
Marginalized throughout her career as a mere thriller writer, Highsmith has experienced a remarkable renaissance since her death in 1995. Now Highsmith fans and new readers alike can find these five novels — The Talented Mr. Ripley, Ripley Under Ground, Ripley's Game, The Boy Who Followed Ripley, and Ripley Under Water — all housed under one roof in this brilliantly designed, highly collectible edition.
Review
More than 50 years after Highsmith first introduced him in
The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955), fans of the dashing and dangerous Tom Ripley can enjoy all his adventures in one set —
The Talented Mr. Ripley,
Ripley Under Ground,
Followed Ripley and
Ripley Under Water. Highsmith (1921 - 1991) first gained prominence with her 1950 novel,
Strangers on a Train, adapted a year later to film by Alfred Hitchcock.
But it was Ripley who cemented her name in the burgeoning genre of psychological suspense. From his first murder — of rich playboy Dickie Greenleaf in Talented — to his graceful fade into anonymity in Under Water, Ripley is everything crime fiction fans love in an (anti)hero: a charmingly slick killer who can worm his way out of anything.
Review
"[Highsmith] forces us to re-evaluate the lines between reason and madness, normal and abnormal, while goading us into sharing her treacherous hero's point of view." Michiko Kakutani
Review
[...] Novel after novel, the waters are troubled, masks rearranged on the face, as Highsmith shows us an individual unencumbered by constraints of legality or morality. Ripley is truly a self-made man, bringing us to silent recognition of the selfsame treacherous longings coiled and waiting in our hearts.
These are powerful books for their compelling character and the force of their narrative, certainly, yet still more so for all that goes on underneath. On the surface, we have imminently readable, fairly straightforward novels of suspense. But lurking in depths are coded tales of repressed sexuality; ontological questions of identity; an apologue of adolescence mimicking (lying) its way into adulthood; an allegory of the creative imagination and its perils. These are not things that we take away from the reading; rather, they are the things that take us, even if unaware, ever more deeply into the reading....
Review
"The hallmark of [Highsmith's] work is a calm, hallucinatory intensity built on sentences of unemotional plainness and clarity. Her hypersensitive protagonists, logically, inexorably, spiral downhill from ordinary anxiety to murderous rage and madness." Michael Dirda, New York Review of Books (read the entire )
Synopsis
First published in 2008, The Complete Ripley Novels, brilliantly designed in a handsome slipcase, sold out its initial run. This collector's item, featuring all five classic Ripley novels--The Talented Mr. Ripley, Ripley Under Ground, Ripley's Game, The Boy Who Followed Ripley, and Ripley Under Water--returns with a new printing on the twentieth anniversary of Patricia Highsmith's death in 1995. The Highsmith literary renaissance, initially sparked by a 1999 film adaptation of The Talented Mr. Ripley--which introduced fans and new readers alike to the unforgettable Tom Ripley, the debonair confidence man with a talent for self-invention and murder--continues in full force with three major Highsmith movies in the offing as well as the republication of this volume, "the most sinister and strangely alluring quintet the crime fiction genre has ever produced" (Entertainment Weekly).
Synopsis
[...] fans of the dashing and dangerous Tom Ripley can enjoy all his adventures in one set...[...] Novel after novel, the waters are troubled, masks rearranged on the face, as Highsmith shows us an individual unencumbered by constraints of legality or morality. Ripley is truly a self-made man, bringing us to silent recognition of the selfsame treacherous longings coiled and waiting in our hearts....
Synopsis
No lover of American literature should be without this stunning boxed set of all five Ripley novels.
Synopsis
The Complete Ripley Novels--a first-time, boxed collection of the entire Ripley series--is a cause for critical and popular celebration. Its publication reflects the fact that Patricia Highsmith, "no more a practitioner of the murder mystery genre ... than are Dostoevsky, Faulkner and Camus" (Joan Smith, Los Angeles Times), has finally entered the American literary canon. Marginalized throughout her career as a mere thriller writer, Highsmith has experienced a remarkable renaissance since her death in 1995. Now Highsmith fans and new readers alike can find these five novels--The Talented Mr. Ripley, Ripley Under Ground, Ripley's Game, The Boy Who Followed Ripley, and Ripley Under Water--all housed under one roof in this brilliantly designed, highly collectible edition.
Synopsis
Collected here in this stunning, boxed-set edition, celebrates one of fiction's most iconic literary characters.
Synopsis
First published in 2008, , brilliantly designed in a handsome slipcase, sold out its initial run. This collector's item, featuring all five classic Ripley novels--, and --returns with a new printing on the twentieth anniversary of Patricia Highsmith's death in 1995. The Highsmith literary renaissance, initially sparked by a 1999 film adaptation of --which introduced fans and new readers alike to the unforgettable Tom Ripley, the debonair confidence man with a talent for self-invention and murder--continues in full force with three major Highsmith movies in the offing as well as the republication of this volume, "the most sinister and strangely alluring quintet the crime fiction genre has ever produced" ().
About the Author
Patricia Highsmith, who died in Switzerland in 1995, wrote more than thirty novels, including Strangers on a Train and The Price of Salt, as well as numerous short stories.