1/12/1972 Highsmith starts a game

January 12, 1972.  On this date Patricia Highsmith came up with the first sentence of Ripley's Game.  It is her third novel about the immoral Tom Ripley who hates murder, "unless absolutely necessary."  It has been filmed twice, in German and in English.

1/19/1921 Patricia Highsmith is born

January 19, 1921.  Patricia Highsmith was born on this date in Fort Worth, Texas.  Her best known novels are the five books about the villainous Tom Ripley, and Strangers On A Train.  A lot of  them were made into movies, including that classic directed by Alfred Hitchcock.  Her classic novel of lesbian romance The Price of Salt, was just made into the movie Carol, which came out last year.

One person who knew her described Highsmith as "a mean, hard, cruel, unlovable, unloving person."  But she sure could write.

5/23/1985 Found In The Street is finished

May 23, 1985.  On this date Patricia Highsmith completed her twentieth novel.  Found In The Street is set in Greenwich Village and centers on two men's obsessions with a newly arrived would-be model. Kirkus Reviews lamented that Highsmith had been passed by a generation of thriller writers who had learned from her (such as Ruth Rendell) and complained that the book was "[s]poradically engrossing, then, but largely unsatisfying."