Patricia Highsmith's antihero lives in some kind of villa in rural France with a beautiful French wife, engages in various smuggling and art forgery activities, reluctantly kills a person who was going to expose him, and worries about another person in his art forgery ring who is going to pieces. Oh, and he connects with a relative of a guy he killed in the prior novel. It is a compulsively readable novel, but for a novel about an American sociopath living abroad, it does not seem to have much to say about anything. It eventually gets bogged down in the mechanics of covering up murder. ( )

Digital audiobook performed by Kevin Kenerly
3***

This is book two in the series, featuring psychopath Tom Ripley. It’s six years after Tom murdered Dickie Greenleaf and inherited his money. He’s since married a pharmaceutical heiress and they live in a villa in France. Everything seems to be going swimmingly, until Tom gets a call from London. An art forgery scheme he set up a few years ago is threatened by a nosy American asking questions.

Highsmith was a talented writer, and she could craft a chilling psychological thriller. In the first Ripley book we met a charming, somewhat socially inept, closeted gay young man with ambition. He was clever, quick-thinking, and determined to get rich. Lies came easily and murder even more so. If it served his purpose, he did it. But THIS Ripley is a drudge. The whole art forgery scheme is kinda amateurish, and I didn’t see it has having the “Ripley stamp.” Beyond having originally set up the con, why is he even still involved? He doesn’t paint the forgeries, and he’s not exactly making a fortune off the scheme. But it seems he just can’t help himself; he has to lie and cheat and steal and kill because he just doesn’t know how else to act. As the bodies pile up and investigators get closer to the truth, Ripley’s ability to charm his way out of things is taxed to the max. He seems to be completely unraveling, and yet …

The ending is a bit of a cliffhanger, which is one of my pet peeves. But I suspect Highsmith just ran out of steam and decided to stop.

Kevin Kenerly does a pretty good job of voicing the audiobook. He made the various characters sufficiently unique so I could easily tell who was speaking. Too bad he didn’t have better material to work with. ( )

Not the same Ripley as the first book. Well, I guess we all change as we get older. But--a psychopath?
And, the folks he tells about the murder just kind of shrug it off, as if to say, "Well, what are you gonna do?" The ending didn't leave much to be desired either. Still, it's a decent read. I'll go ahead and read the next one in the Ripley saga. ( )

I think she should have retired Ripley after the first novel. ( )

Another astonishingly twisted tale from Highsmith. Ripley's no simple character. What's the quote? What a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive? Or something like that. Ripley's the epitome. He solves a problem by spontaneously killing someone wch leads to even more problems wch lead to even more desperate & complicated solutions. No, no simple character. Ripley's simultaneously sociopathic & full of feeling, of appreciation for culture, of love & sentiment. & yet he kills almost like it's no big deal to solve problems when he can't think of any other way out. Highsmith handles the psychology like someone who's known quite a few extreme people in her time - maybe all w/in herself. ( )