The inspiration for Alfred Hitchcock's classic 1951 film, the novel that
established Patricia Highsmith as a master of noir fiction.
"In this mesmerizing [novel] . . . not to be recommended for the weak-minded and
impressionable" (Washington Post), we encounter Guy Haines, a successful
architect in the midst of a divorce, and Charles Anthony Bruno, a conniving
psychopath who manipulates a chance encounter with Guy into a sadistic plot to
swap murders. "Some people are better off dead," says Bruno, "like your wife and
my father, for instance." As Bruno carries out his twisted plan, Guy becomes
trapped in Patricia Highsmith's perilous world, where under the right
circumstances