The Boy Who Followed Ripley Author:Patricia Highsmith Patricia Highsmith, internationally aclaimed master of psychological suspense fiction, has written a deceptively quiet new novel as intricate and haunting as a shattered mirror. — Moving from a luxurious Parisian country home to the glittery sexual underworld of Berlin to the elegant grounds of a multimillionaire's Maine estate, The Boy Who Follo... more »wed Ripley is a tender and terrifying exploration of trust and friendship between a young man with a guilty conscience and an older one who has learned to erase his own.
Tom Ripley, expatriate American 'homme d'affaires', is leading a pleasant and unexceptional life outside of Paris, until he befriends a sixteen-year-old American who appears in a local bar-cafe'. As the boy's true identity comes to light, Ripley finds himself harboring fugitive Frank Pierson, who declares himself responsible for the recent highly suspicious death of his crippled multi-millionare father. Should Tom Ripley believe him?
In a tangled web of friendship and dependence, Ripley grows increasingly protective of the troubled youth. Chasing across Europe to Berlin, they evade a detective hired by the Pierson family, but not a band of kidnappers, who snatch Frank and demand an enormous ransom. After Ripley manages a daring rescue of the boy from one of Berlin's hottest night spots, the two return to Paris and then to the Pierson family estate in Kennebunkport, Maine, where their mutual trust and affection are tested in a desperate, devastating confrontation.
Writing with a style and perceptiveness often compared to the work of Graham Greene and John LeCarre', Patricia Highsmith gives us a supremely absorbing tale of love and hate, trust and fear--and life and death.« less