2 BY PATRICIA HIGHSMITH

Patricia Highsmith – who is she? Never read her!

She's only "The No. 1 Greatest Crime Writer" according to The Times  

Well I did try a Ripley book a few years ago and gave up on it – probably a case of wrong book at the wrong time. So she is definitely someone I need to get back to.

Highsmith, an American author wrote 5 books in the Tom Ripley series and 17 other novels – possibly the most famous of which is Strangers on a Train (1950)

I have 4 of the Ripley’s and the Strangers on the Train book in the library with possibly more to be discovered as I catalogue my tubs of books.

She died in 1995.

THE GLASS CELL (1964)

At last back in print, one of Patricia Highsmith's most disturbing works. Rife with overtones of Dostoyevsky, The Glass Cell, first published forty years ago, combines a quintessential Highsmith mystery with a penetrating critique of the psychological devastation wrought by the prison system. Falsely convicted of fraud, the easy going but naïve Philip Carter is sentenced to six lonely, drug-ravaged years in prison. Upon his release, Carter is a more suspicious and violent man. For those around him, earning back his trust can mean the difference between life and death. The Glass Cell's bleak and compelling portrait of daily prison life-and the consequences for those who live it-is, sadly, as relevant today as it was when the book was first published in 1964.

THOSE WHO WALK AWAY (1967)

The honeymoon is over; the bride dead by her own hand. Ray Garrett, the grieving husband, convinces the police in Rome of his innocence, but not his father-in-law, Ed Coleman, who shoots him at point-blank range and leaves him for dead. Ray survives and follows Coleman to Venice, where the two fall into an eerie game of cat-and-mouse - Coleman obsessed with vengeance and Ray determined to save his reputation, and himself. Each is at once the hunter and the hunted in a tense duel that, as each manages to walk away, draws them nearer to death.