Andrew Wilson, Beautiful Shadow—A Life of Patricia Highsmith

Best known for the Hitchcock-filmed Strangers on a Train and her series of books about psychotic aesthete Tom Ripley, Patricia Highsmith was motivated by a muse of bitterness, amorality, and disgust—not necessarily a bad thing for a crime novelist. She died mostly forgotten in 1995, but a full-on revival is ongoing with this her most prominent year yet. Shadow is only one of three forthcoming biographies, and John Malkovich’s film version of her Ripley’s Game is garnering good reviews. Though Highsmith was highly intelligent and a terrific writer, Beautiful Shadow makes clear her many faults. She drank. She nursed a lifelong resentment of her mother (who had attempted to abort her by drinking turpentine). She could be mean-spirited, cheap, manipulative, and bigoted, so often unpleasant that even her admirers say things like “I liked her incredible bitchiness.” Of course, this makes her life story all the more compelling.