Deep Water

To everyone around them, Melinda and Vic Van Allen are the perfect couple - young, wealthy and attractive. But when their love sours, their mind games reach a twisted, dangerous climax. Published as part of a beautifully designed series to mark the 40th anniversary of the Virago Modern Classics.

The outstanding merit of Deep Water is the dexterity with which it develops the psychopath's portrait from the first faint agreeable outline to the full dark horrific colours of schizophrenia. If you read crime stories at all or perhaps especially if you don't, you should read Deep Water.

My suspicion is that when the dust has settled and when the chronicle of 20th-century American literature comes to be written, history will place Highsmith at the top of the pyramid, as we should place Dostoevsky at the top of the Russian hierarchy of novelists

I love [Highsmith] so much . . . what a revelation her writing was

The outstanding merit of Deep Water is the dexterity with which it develops the psychopath's portrait from the first faint agreeable outline to the full dark horrific colours of schizophrenia. If you read crime stories at all or perhaps especially if you don't, you should read Deep Water.

An atmosphere of nameless dread, of unspeakable foreboding, permeates every page of Patricia Highsmith, and there's nothing quite like it.

My suspicion is that when the dust has settled and when the chronicle of 20th-century American literature comes to be written, history will place Highsmith at the top of the pyramid, as we should place Dostoevsky at the top of the Russian hierarchy of novelists

I love [Highsmith] so much . . . what a revelation her writing was

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.