Description

"Ripley is definitely an unique enfant of Gatsby, that 'penniless young man without a past' who'll end at nothing."—Frank RichNow component of American movie and literary lore, Tom Ripley, "a bisexual psychopath and art forger who murders without regret when his comforts are threatened" (New York Times Book Review), was Patricia Highsmith's favorite creation. In The Boy Who Followed Ripley (1980), Highsmith examines Ripley's bizarrely paternal connection with a struggling young runaway, whose abduction attracts them into Berlin's seamy underworld. Significantly more than every other National fictional personality, Ripley offers "a contact to look in to the sinister machinations of human conduct" (John Freeman, Pittsburgh Gazette).