We Are All Tom Ripley

Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 novel The Talented Mr Ripley pickpockets the plot of Henry James’s The Ambassadors (1903) and turns it into a detective thriller set in the early years of the Cold War. Oblivious shipping magnate Herbert Greenleaf taps the eponymous Tom Ripley, a low-life grifter and petty criminal, to be the “ambassador” to his wayward son Dickie, who has been painting and soaking up martinis and sunshine on the Amalfi Coast in the company of the aspiring novelist Marge Sherwood. Tom’s mission is to bring Dickie home to New York, where his ailing mother and business responsibilities await him. Instead, he slowly insinuates himself into Dickie’s life, breaks up his relationship with Marge, murders Dickie in a boat in Sanremo, steals his identity, murders his close friend Freddie Myles in Rome, double-crosses the Italian police, and makes off with Dickie’s sizeable inheritance.