Reading now? Well, one thing I'm reading now is The Blunderer, by Patricia Highsmith. Written in the 1950's, it's about a lawyer who wants to divorce his life, which she doesn't want him to. But she gets murdered, so it doesn't matter what she wants or doesn't want. Which is convenient for him, as the police seem to notice. Also he makes a lot of stupid mistakes that don't help his case.
There's something that escapes me, maybe I'll understand when I finish. The detective investigating the case is on the Philadelphia PD. He questions the protagonist (can't really call him a hero), who's from Long Island, but the crime did take place in Philly, so that makes sense. He's also trying to close a murder case that happened in Newark. I mean, it's a legitimate case, but it's way out of his jurisdiction. Maybe Highsmith just didn't want to complicate things by bringing in another set of detectives.
Otherwise it's a good, tense story. Highsmith doesn't seem to be the kind of novelist who falls in love with her characters, but that's not always necessary. A little 'net research showed that this one was filmed just a couple of years ago as A Kind of Murder. I could have seen Hitchcock making it his second Highsmith adaptation, but he never got around to it.
There's something that escapes me, maybe I'll understand when I finish. The detective investigating the case is on the Philadelphia PD. He questions the protagonist (can't really call him a hero), who's from Long Island, but the crime did take place in Philly, so that makes sense. He's also trying to close a murder case that happened in Newark. I mean, it's a legitimate case, but it's way out of his jurisdiction. Maybe Highsmith just didn't want to complicate things by bringing in another set of detectives.
Otherwise it's a good, tense story. Highsmith doesn't seem to be the kind of novelist who falls in love with her characters, but that's not always necessary. A little 'net research showed that this one was filmed just a couple of years ago as A Kind of Murder. I could have seen Hitchcock making it his second Highsmith adaptation, but he never got around to it.
2 comments:
I only know Patricia Highsmith's work through the movies made from them. In my opinion Strangers on a Train was one of Hitchcock's very best films with the original meeting of the two protagonists being extremely portentous of what will follow. That the movie was funny as well as terrifying made it all the more enjoyable.
Ripley was good too but it didn't capture my interest quite so much that I felt like reading the novels.
The premise you've described of The Blunderer reminded me of one of francis Iles's books Malice Aforethought in which a doctor decides to get rid of the wife who won't give him a divorce. As a physician he has a broad scope for enacting his plan. Interestingly, it was Hitchcock who made a movie of another Francis Iles book, Before the Fact, with the title changed to Suspicion. I read the book only a year or so ago and was surprised that the movie I'd remembered told a decidedly different story to the the novel.
Hitchcock did a fine job on Strangers on a Train. Bruno, the killer, was clearly a psychopath, but he was also alive in a way the other characters weren't. While I haven't read that particular novel, it feels true to what I've read of Highsmith.
I remember Dennis Hopper playing Ripley in The American Friend. It was a neat interpretation. There seems to be a lot you can do with the character.
"Francis Iles" was a pen name for Anthony Berkley Cox, who's pretty well known for whodunits. I'm curious to read more of him. I think I've actually read Malice Aforethought on your recommendation, although I might be thinking of something else. I do remember hearing that the ending was changed for Suspicion, which they might have had to do under the Production Codes.
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