This week, I reread one of my favorite novels from one of my favorite writers: The Cry of the Owl by Patricia Highsmith.  I spent much of 2025 picking novels off my shelves here in Mexicali.  My goal was to read 50 novels in 50 weeks.  I’m glad I did.  They all seemed to be much better reads the second time around.  Some, if not most, I hadn’t read in 40-50 years.  It’s like I’m reading with NEW EYES.  Maybe this is one of my motivations for writing this here.  This semester I am introducing a new  novel, The Secret Book of Frida Kahlo, to my students.  It’s l-o-n-g and a little complicated. If my students are reading this post, I can tell them if they don’t like the book this time, they should try rereading it in like 50 years.  I bet it will come out differently.

Many readers of Patricia Highsmith novels may be attracted to her haunted characters.  I’m not sure WHY, but I include myself in this group.  Pat has this special ability to create characters that we love and appreciate at the beginning of the book, but then we see these same characters turn shockingly violent near the end of the book, if not sooner.   This is the FUNNY part: We grow so attached to these characters, that we are STILL WITH THEM when the KILLING STARTS.   I hear this or read this quite often about Pat’s murderous heroes and heroines.   We actually root for them to escape, or even worse, we want to see them kill again.  That’s not Jaja funny, I suppose, but we keep on reading.

I read two or three Highsmith novels last year. Strangers on a Train, I read recently – this  was Pat’s first novel.  She was able to publish in her twenties.  When she began writing this novel, she couldn’t have been much older than my students are now.  One of her main characters was a COMPLETE PSYCHOPATH.  His name was Bruno. The novel was based on two rich kids – young men in their early twenties – who meet over drinks in the dining car of train.

 ( To see my Strangers post, you can go here: https://planetmexicali.org/2025/05/25/jays-cracked-reader-post-patricia-highsmith-alfred-hitchcock-david-bowie-more-reading-marathon/ )

 I believe most readers will agree with me – that Bruno was much more interesting than anyone else in the novel.  I mean he was COMPLEX.  Smart.  Quick.  He had the ability to read people and situations.   Like when he met a young man his age on a train, he seemed to know more about this man than the man knew about himself.   Like he was visionary.   Woudn’t we all want to be like that?  OK, Bruno  appeared to be a Mama’s Boy, and a sloppy drunk.  He dressed strangely and said some creepy things.  This kind of behavior only endeared us to him.   In Strangers on a Train, when Bruno meets Guy (that’s his name) he can immediately  recognize the resentment his new friend has for his wife. Without knowing any details, Bruno offers to kill her.  Here is his plan: Bruno – a total stranger – would visit Guy’s hometown and strangle his wife – and in return, Guy would respond in kind by killing Bruno’s hated father. IT WOULD BE LIKE A MURDER SWAP.  Who could possibly anticipate a premeditated killing by a perfect stranger.   We – the readers – really didn’t understand WHY he came up with his ideas or WHERE they came from, but it was readily apparent that he has no qualms about killing, and there was no stopping him.   I share Bruno here, for he seems to me to be a typical Highsmith character.  I’m not talking about his violent nature; I’m highlighting his complete lack of conscience.  Sooner or later, we realize that something is not right with this guy.  Everywhere he goes he leaves a trail of dead bodies.

Wait!  I also read Pat’s The Price of Salt.  Surprise! There is no murder in this one.  But, there is more than enough obsessive behavior.  This novel is about a young woman, working in the toy department of a New York City department store, who becomes obsessed with one of her female customers. Because of the hint of a homosexual theme, Pat couldn’t or wouldn’t publish under her real name.  She chose the pseudonym Claire Morgan. Pat wrote the book based on her own experience working at Bloomingdale’s during Christmas vacation from college.   After making a sale to an attractive older woman who bought a doll for her daughter, Pat was able to  copy this woman’s New Jersey address on the sales transaction, and stalk this woman as soon as she had any time off. 

( To see my reflections of The Price of Salt, you can click on this link: . https://planetmexicali.org/2025/07/13/jays-new-york-city-reading-post-the-price-of-salt-patricia-highsmith-real-life-love-at-first-sight-i/ )

For a few weeks,  Pat used to walk up and down the street and around the block of the house hoping to get a glimpse of her fantasy lover, or even bump into her.  According to what I have read, this never happened as Pat planned.  She never met the woman.  The woman had no idea she was the object of her obsession.  On a positive note, Pat was able to make things happen in her writing.  Her troublesome, maybe dangerous, feelings for this woman metamorphosized into a very intense and personal character named Therese in The Price of Salt.

I bring up these two novels, for they inspired me to read The Cry of the Owl.  The protagonist here, Robert Forester bears resemblance to Bruno and Terese.  I’m not going to say if he kills anyone or not, but it would be difficult not to sense something evil is coming your way after the first scene. Robert is a young industrial engineer that works in the suburbs of upstate New York; he seems to have a good job and a bright future, but from the beginning of the novel we can tell he’s very lonely.  How do we know that?  Because after work, he doesn’t go directly home; he parks his car in the middle of the woods and takes a moonlight walk through the shadows before he finds a good hiding place where he can peek through the windows of a young woman’s house.  He’s apparently obsessed with her.  Not in the way you might think.  He doesn’t make any attempt to see her in her underwear; rather, he likes to watch her through the kitchen window while she is washing dishes and singing to a radio in the background.  He’s been doing this for weeks.   He knows she has a boyfriend. And he knows it’s wrong. Dangerous.  But, he is just mesmorized by the image of this girl’s face through the window.  In most cases, this could be called “prowling.”   If he was caught, he could probably expect additional charges of  sexual perversion.  Robert knows this, but he can’t stop himeself.  He can’t get out of his own way.

This is what I mean:  I don’t think Robert displays even a trace of psychotic behavior.  He knows exactly what he is doing. I almost feel sorry for him.  By standing behind a tree and glimpsing at this woman from the shadows, he is risking his career and good standing in the community.   Here is the weird part:  it doesn’t take long for the woman to catch him in the act.  At a certain point, she raises her eyes from what she was doing in the kitchen sink, and she see Robert staring at her through the window.  At first she threatens to call the cops, but there is something about his eyes, I suppose, in the moonlight, that make her change her mind.  For an instant, Robert resigns to his fate.  Maybe he wanted to get caught.  He tells her that’s exactly what she should do.  He has no business to intrude on her privacy.  When she asks him out of all the houses in the area, why he has chosen to look through her window, he says because she looks so happy.   She forgets about calling 911, and she invites him in the house. She thinks he looks so lonely out there.  I’m not writing book report here, but once we get to know her, we see that she is stranger than Robert.  She becomes more obsessed with him than he is with her.   This is where the tension if the novel escalates.  In this type of relationship, only bad things can follow.