Who wrote The Talented Mr. Ripley, the 1955 novel featuring Tom Ripley?

Patricia Highsmith wrote The Talented Mr. Ripley, the 1955 novel featuring Tom Ripley.

The book introduced Highsmith’s most famous character: a charming, amoral manipulator who travels to Italy after being asked to retrieve Dickie Greenleaf. Rather than simply solving a crime, Ripley gradually becomes the criminal at the center of the story.

The novel established Highsmith’s distinctive psychological-crime style. Its tension comes less from police procedure than from Ripley’s shifting identities, social ambition, and ability to exploit other people’s assumptions. This makes the book an important bridge between traditional detective fiction and the modern psychological thriller.

The Talented Mr. Ripley was the first of five novels about the character. It is sometimes confused with the 1999 film adaptation starring Matt Damon, Jude Law, and Gwyneth Paltrow, but Highsmith’s novel appeared more than four decades earlier.