Member-only story
Around the World in Books / Mexico
The Patricia Highsmith You Don’t Know If You Know Only Tom Ripley
Her only mystery set in Mexico moves from Mexico City to Acapulco and Guanajuato after pre-Lenten carnival revels
This is the 16th post in the “Around the World in Books” series that is reviewing 30 books from 30 countries in the first 30 days of March. Tomorrow: North Korea
The Texas-born Patricia Highsmith urged foreign publishers to “think twice” before reprinting A Game for the Living: She thought it didn’t come up to her usual standards. In a sense, she was right.
Highsmith made her name with psychological thrillers like Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley. A Game for the Living is her only whodunit — a murder mystery that opens with a dead body and scatters clues to the identity of the killer, Agatha Christie–style, instead of beginning by foreshadowing crimes to come. Highsmith has a less secure grip than Christie and her imitators on the conventions of that form, such as a fast pace and airtight plot, so isn’t surprising that she saw this her as least successful novel.
