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Virago Modern Classics, Fiction, Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945), Crime & mystery, Classic crime, Thriller / suspense, Short stories
The Black House eerily evokes the warm familiarities of suburban life: the manicured lawns, the white picket fences, and the local pubs, each providing the backbone for Highsmith's chilling portraits.
The Black House eerily evokes the warm familiarities of suburban life: the manicured lawns, the white picket fences, and the local pubs, each providing the setting for Highsmith's chilling portraits.
Some neighbours are playing scrabble one evening when their cat drags into their house not a bird, or some other catch, but human fingers; a guest arrives at a dinner party where he is not welcome, and his hosts conspire to find and attack his Achilles heel; the crew of the Emma C rescue a beautiful girl floating inconscious in the sea and tension explodes between the men on board; a childless thirtysomething couple decide to invite two elderly folk to live with them, but have they been too generous
In this colleciton of Patricia Highsmith's wonderfully unsettling short stories, people's motives are frequently twisted and no occurence is without a sinister underlying meaning.
Patricia Highsmith
Patricia Highsmith (1921-1995) was born in Fort Worth, Texas, and moved to New York when she was six. In her senior year, she edited the college magazine, having decided at the age of sixteen to become a writer. Her first novel, Strangers on a Train (1950), was made into a classic film by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951. The Talented Mr Ripley (1955), introduced the fascinating anti-hero Tom Ripley, and was made into an Oscar-winning film in 1999 by Anthony Minghella. Highsmith died in Locarno, Switzerland, in February 1995. Her last novel, Small g: A Summer Idyll, was published posthumously, the same year.
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