Ripley Under Ground Author:Patricia Highsmith Tom Ripley led a comfortable, leisurely life in his spacious country home near Paris... He no longer worried about the gossip that followed his sudden marriage to the daughter of a well-to-do French industrialist, or about the unpleasantness that surrounded the mysterious death of a wealthy young friend who left Tom a large portion of his estate... more ». And the only "impropriety" about his interest in Derwatt, Ltd., was a well-kept secret. The secret was simply that Derwatt, the brilliant surrealist painter, had been dead for six years.« less