The Talented Mr. Ripley

An American classic and the inspiration for the motion picture starring Matt Damon and Gwyneth Paltrow. Its here, in the first volume of Patricia Highsmiths five-book Ripley series, that we are introduced to the suave Tom Ripley, a young striver seeking to leave behind his past as an orphan bullied for being a sissy. Newly arrived in the heady world of Manhattan, Ripley meets a wealthy industrialist who hires him to bring his playboy son, Dickie Greenleaf, back from gallivanting in Italy. Soon Ripleys fascination with Dickies debonair lifestyle turns obsessive as he finds himself enraged by Dickies ambivalent affections for Marge, a charming American dilettante, and Ripley begins a deadly game. Sinister and strangely alluring (Mark Harris, Entertainment Weekly) The Talented Mr. Ripley serves as an unforgettable introduction to this smooth confidence man, whose talent for self-invention is as unnervingand unnervingly revealing of the American psycheas ever.