Over the Holiday Vacation I read three novels by Patricia Highsmith.  Actually they were Three in One.  I found an anthology called The Mysterious Mr. Ripley that brings together three of the author's most successful Ripley novels.  Of course I read them in reverse order.  Doesn't everyone do that?  All of these books feature Madame Highsmith's most complex psychopath – you guessed it – Mr. Tom Ripley.  Today we would call Tom a serial killer.   He seems like a nice guy on the surface, but he has no conscience.  No moral compass.  In each novel,  one thing always leads to another, and Tom ends up killing somebody.   I started with Ripley's Game.  In this story, you can call Tom a successful art dealer.  He is an American that lives with his beautiful French wife on a grand estate on the outskirts of Paris, France. He seems to live a very happy, tranquil life.   On a train ride between Hamburg and Paris, however, Tom garrotes a man in the W.C. and throws him off the train.  I just told you WHAT he did.  But, I won't tell you WHY he did it.   Immediately afterwards, he calmly sits down to a bowl of hot goulash and refeshing Carlsbad — like he hasn't given this murder a second thought.  This is a continuing pattern of Tom's behavior throughout the three novels.   I'm not sure he knows WHY he did it – killed a man he didn't know.   In this case he had little to gain.  I'm not sure WHY he doesn't  worry about getting caught.  I suppose it's because he just doesn't give a FUCK. 

I first read The Talented Mr. Ripley close to forty years ago.  From the get-go, I fell in  love with M. Highsmith's writing.  This novel is so tight,  but this Ripley character is so complex.  The Talented Mr. Ripley is the first in the series.  Young Tom – he is in his early twenties –  has an affinity for languages and fine art. He paints and he sketches, and he also knows how to play the piano and the harpischord.  I may have read The Talented Mr. Ripley when I was basically the same age as Tom.  I probably paid more attention to his ambitions than I did his perversions (and/or psychotic tendencies).   In this particular novel, he  always carries with him a copy of a Harrap's Language Dictionary.  No matter how busy or bloody – Jaja – things get during the day, he makes time to practice his conjungation and vocabulary at the end of the night.  He always focuses on moving up to the next level no matter what he is doing.  Over the years, Tom has inspired me to learn French and later Spanish. Fortunately, his capacity for violence hasn't affected me. I love the tension set in each novel.   For every plotline,  Tom doesn't run away from trouble, he runs towards it.  I enjoy how Tom creative approaches to escape each of his predicaments.  You could say that each one of his capers may resemble a work of art.  I mean, nothing pretty, but always unique.  Like all artists, Tom has a passion for what he does.  With each novel I find myself laughing out loud with the author.   I don't know why,  but I feel for Tom.  I keep reading to see how he is going to get away with murder.  Forty years later, I'm reading him again.

This week I celebrate Ripley Underground.  Tom is more mature and worldly than we saw him in The Talented Mr. Ripley.  He must be in his thirties, and he's married to a beautiful French woman. This is cool.  As an older and more secure man, Tom is not as harried as he was in the first novel.  His movements are more precise and calculated. His crimes are more sophisticated and profitable.  When he has to kill someone, he seems to enjoy it.   This is what happens:  Upon learning of the disappearance and possible suicide of a famous painter, Tom invents the scam that this talented and very profitable artist may have faked his own death and now lives in obscurity in Mexico —  kind of like a Jim Morrison conspiracy without the psychedelic blues and acid rock. Tom convinces a small group of willing artists and art dealers to join him in this fraud. Over the course of a few years, they begin forging the artist Derwatt's work and selling them in London art shows. To keep things moving and the money flowing, Tom goes on a killing spree.  Anyone who gets close to the truth is a dead man.  Just like in the other two novels, Tom has no regrets or fear for what he does. He burns and buries bodies.   The police are on to him – they can see a trail of murder victims in his wake, but they have no evidence to arrest him. This just emboldens Tom.  He even shares the truth to his wife.  It's kind of cute the way he does it. He enlists her to lie to the cops.  He LOVES her, and she LOVES him, but I could only infer that he knows that she knows, should she ever open her mouth she will end up like the others.   Jaja.  He has all his ducks in a row.

I like reading novels about writers.  It's fun for me to follow their creative process.  In this case, Tom is very much like many of the authors I have read about.  I get the feeling his eyes are always wide open for his next idea.   In Tom's life, however,  he isn't looking to write the next chapter,  he's thinking about his next victim.  For M. Highsmith, writing was a way to explore her dark side.  Many critics I have read say she wrote from her unconscious.  She used herself as a model for Ripley.  She used Ripley to deepen her own imagination.  At a certain point the TWO become ONE.  Writing was her obsession: "I'm miserable when I can't write," she once said.  The same is probably true for Ripley when he can't kill.