Rating: 
Summary: Ruth Rendell-like
Review: Someone once said that Patricia Highsmith's novels are like bad dreams that keep us thrashing during the night. This one is no exception. I can't really call it a mystery becuase there really is no "who done it" - at least who done it in the terms that we would normally associate it. Rather, Ms. Highsmith comes across like Ruth Rendell or maybe Elmore Leonard. Not so much of a mystery as a crime novel where the plot really isn't the driving force, it's the characters. She, like Rendell and Leonard, has created a few characters who bounce off of one another like billiard balls and move the story along. Sydney Bartleby, an aspiring author-to-be, imagines a plot to kill off his wife Alicia, a painter. Oh, he hasn't done it, mind you, but he has thought about it enough. So, when Alicia takes some time off away from ol' Syd because their marriage is reaching the straining point, Sydney begins a descent into the netherworld of his own imagination. Did he kill her and bury her in a carpet in the middle of the woods? The only person in the book who might even begin to resemble a "good guy", widowed Mrs. Lilybanks, their neighbor, isn't so sure. Sydney leads the police on in their investigation and when it appears that his own fictions will rock and destroy his own life - and he keeps going on - you just want to shake him. I found this to be just a little unbelieveable. The last couple of chapters will either surprise you or leave you asking, "Is that all there is?" Ms. Highsmith hasn't been that well publicized in the U.S. until one of her earlier novels, "The Talented Mr. Ripley", was made into a movie. Still, like here classic debut novel, "Strangers on a Train", this one shows us what forces might be perculating just below the skin of everyday life. Elmore and Ruth would be proud.
Rating:
Summary: Worth checking out
Review: Sydney and Alicia have been together for about a year and their marriage is boring. She is sweet and patient, he is always selfish, easily irritated and treats her with indifference. Sidney is a fiction writer and enjoys imagining stories. He starts wondering how it would be like if his wife were dead; he begins to enjoy thinking of her falling down the stairs and breaking her neck. Wierd! He gets completely carried away with his deadly fantasies. One day Alicia gets fed up with his ill mood and decides to go away and stay at a hotel in another town. She gives a false name and stays a long while unrecognized with a new haircut. Then new characters come into scene. Every person is described very realistically. The psychology of each character is deeply explored. Things slowly begin to change; the story takes a new direction...The ending is surprising. As I said in my other reviews on P. Highsmith, I really like this author. A Suspension of Mercy is not bad. Ok, it's a bit silly. But it's worth checking out !
Rating:
Summary: Another strange Highsmith brew
Review: There is something tantalyzing about reading a book that could only be a book; a story that hides behind the fact that you can only know what you are told, never what you see. Is the story-teller of this novel (the original title was, I believe, "The Storyteller") telling us the bizarre and awful things he is doing or is he working out the plotline of a new fiction? Curious characters and situations, and some very odd behavior that stretches your reader's patience. But we do not go to Highsmith to meet conventional people with conventional behavior; we ask her to introduce us to the perverse and psychologically messy people we hope we never meet outside of her pages.
| 
