Few writers understood obsession, guilt, deception, and the darker corners of human behavior quite like Patricia Highsmith. Her novels rarely rely on conventional heroes and villains. Instead, Highsmith places readers inside the minds of people capable of terrible decisions and somehow makes it difficult to look away.
She is best known today for The Talented Mr. Ripley, but limiting Highsmith to Tom Ripley overlooks some of the best psychological crime novels ever written. Her books explore unhappy marriages, dangerous friendships, jealousy, murder, hidden identities, and characters who slowly convince themselves that almost anything can be justified.
Highsmith’s influence can still be felt throughout modern psychological thrillers and crime fiction. If you enjoy books where the most frightening thing isn’t necessarily the murderer but the mind of the person committing the crime, her novels are well worth exploring.
Whether you’re completely new to her work or looking for another Highsmith novel to read, these are 10 Patricia Highsmith books everyone should read.
The Best Patricia Highsmith Books to Read
- The Talented Mr. Ripley
- Strangers on a Train
- Deep Water
- The Price of Salt
- This Sweet Sickness
- The Cry of the Owl
- Ripley’s Game
- The Blunderer
- Ripley Under Ground
- A Suspension of Mercy
1. The Talented Mr. Ripley
If you’re going to read only one Patricia Highsmith novel, The Talented Mr. Ripley is the obvious place to start.
The novel introduces Tom Ripley, one of crime fiction’s most memorable characters. Tom is young, ambitious, intelligent, and desperate to escape his unimpressive life in America. An opportunity arrives when wealthy businessman Herbert Greenleaf asks Tom to travel to Europe and persuade his son Dickie to return home.
Tom accepts.
Once he arrives in Italy, however, Tom becomes increasingly fascinated with Dickie’s privileged lifestyle. He doesn’t simply want to become Dickie’s friend. He begins to envy everything Dickie has, his money, confidence, freedom, and identity.
That obsession sends the novel in a much darker direction.
What makes The Talented Mr. Ripley remarkable is Highsmith’s ability to place us inside Tom’s mind. We know what he is capable of, yet there are moments when we almost want him to escape the consequences.
Highsmith doesn’t ask readers to admire Tom. She simply makes him fascinating enough that we cannot stop following him.
Anyone who loves psychological thrillers, crime novels, antiheroes, or morally complicated characters should read this book.
2. Strangers on a Train
Before Tom Ripley made Patricia Highsmith famous to generations of readers, there was Strangers on a Train.
The premise is brilliant.
Two strangers meet on a train and begin talking about the people making their lives miserable. One wants to escape an unhappy marriage. The other hates his father.
Then one of them suggests a seemingly perfect crime.
They should swap murders.
Because neither person has any obvious connection to the other’s victim, investigators would have very little reason to suspect them.
What initially sounds like a disturbing hypothetical quickly becomes something far more dangerous.
The brilliance of the novel isn’t simply its murder plot. Highsmith is more interested in the psychological relationship developing between the two men. Guilt, paranoia, manipulation, and obsession begin consuming their lives.
Strangers on a Train is one of the best introductions to Highsmith because many of the themes that define her later work are already here.
A crime may happen quickly.
Living with it is another matter entirely.
3. Deep Water
Readers who enjoy thrillers about toxic marriages should immediately add Deep Water to their reading lists.
Vic and Melinda Van Allen have an unusual marriage. Their relationship has deteriorated, and Melinda openly spends time with other men while Vic quietly tolerates her behavior.
At least that is how things initially appear.
Vic begins joking that he killed one of Melinda’s former lovers. Everyone assumes he is trying to frighten away the men pursuing his wife.
But then someone actually dies.
Deep Water is classic Highsmith because very little about the novel is straightforward. It isn’t simply a question of whether someone is capable of murder.
It is about resentment slowly building beneath the surface.
Highsmith was exceptionally good at writing characters who appear perfectly ordinary to everyone around them while privately entertaining increasingly disturbing thoughts.
The marriage at the center of Deep Water becomes a psychological battleground, making this one of Highsmith’s most unsettling novels.
4. The Price of Salt
The Price of Salt is very different from the crime novels that made Patricia Highsmith famous.
Originally published under the pseudonym Claire Morgan, the novel was later republished as Carol under Highsmith’s own name.
The story follows Therese Belivet, a young woman working in a department store who meets Carol Aird, an elegant older woman going through a difficult divorce.
Their relationship quickly becomes something deeper.
Published in the early 1950s, The Price of Salt stood apart from many novels depicting same-sex relationships at the time because Highsmith refused to give her characters the sort of inevitably tragic conclusion readers had often been conditioned to expect.
There are still complications, prejudice, uncertainty, and difficult choices, but the novel ultimately feels surprisingly hopeful.
Readers who know Highsmith exclusively through Tom Ripley may be surprised by how different this book feels.
Yet her fascination with outsiders, secrecy, identity, desire, and people attempting to escape the expectations placed upon them remains unmistakable.
5. This Sweet Sickness
Obsession is one of Patricia Highsmith’s favorite subjects, and few of her novels explore it better than This Sweet Sickness.
David Kelsey appears to live a fairly ordinary life.
But he maintains another identity and another house where he imagines the life he believes he should be living with Annabelle, a woman he loves.
There is one major problem.
Annabelle has married someone else.
David refuses to accept reality.
Instead, he constructs an elaborate fantasy in which his relationship with Annabelle remains possible. As the gap between his imagined life and the real world grows wider, his behavior becomes increasingly dangerous.
Highsmith’s novels often become frightening because her characters can create convincing explanations for their own actions.
David doesn’t necessarily see himself as irrational.
Inside his mind, everything makes sense.
That makes This Sweet Sickness one of Highsmith’s strongest examinations of obsession and self-deception.
6. The Cry of the Owl
The Cry of the Owl begins with behavior that would immediately set off alarm bells in almost any modern psychological thriller.
Robert Forrester has developed a habit of secretly watching a young woman named Jenny through the window of her home.
Eventually, Jenny discovers him.
But instead of reacting as Robert expects, she becomes fascinated with him.
Their increasingly strange relationship becomes even more complicated when Jenny’s fiancé enters the picture.
From there, Highsmith creates a story filled with suspicion, violence, obsession, and psychological instability.
One of the things Highsmith does brilliantly throughout her career is reverse the reader’s expectations.
Characters who initially appear threatening can become victims.
Characters who appear vulnerable may prove dangerous.
And ordinary situations can quickly become nightmares.
The Cry of the Owl is perfect for readers who enjoy unpredictable psychological suspense where almost every character seems capable of making a terrible decision.
7. Ripley’s Game
You could easily fill half of this list with Tom Ripley novels, but Ripley’s Game deserves special attention.
By this point in the series, Tom has evolved considerably from the ambitious young man readers first encountered in The Talented Mr. Ripley.
He is older, wealthier, and considerably more comfortable with his unusual moral code.
When Tom feels insulted by a man named Jonathan Trevanny, he helps set an incredibly cruel plan into motion.
Jonathan is seriously ill.
Another criminal convinces him that committing murder could provide financial security for his family after his death.
Tom initially watches events unfold from the sidelines but eventually becomes involved himself.
Ripley’s Game demonstrates why Tom Ripley has remained such an enduring character.
He can be charming, thoughtful, cruel, loyal, selfish, and surprisingly helpful—sometimes within the same chapter.
Highsmith never tries to transform him into a traditional hero or villain.
He is simply Tom Ripley.
And that is much more interesting.
8. The Blunderer
The Blunderer is one of Highsmith’s earlier novels and an excellent choice for readers who enjoyed Strangers on a Train.
Walter Stackhouse is trapped in an unhappy marriage and becomes fascinated with an unsolved murder involving a bookseller whose wife died under mysterious circumstances.
Walter begins investigating the case.
That curiosity becomes incredibly dangerous when his own wife later dies.
Suddenly, Walter’s interest in the previous murder makes him appear suspicious.
The situation becomes even worse when the police begin examining the connections between the two cases.
Highsmith once again takes an ordinary man and slowly closes a psychological trap around him.
The novel asks an intriguing question: What happens when your private thoughts and strange behavior make you look guilty—even if the truth is more complicated?
The Blunderer may not be as famous as Highsmith’s biggest novels, but fans of classic psychological crime fiction shouldn’t overlook it.
9. Ripley Under Ground
After finishing The Talented Mr. Ripley, many readers naturally wonder what happens to Tom next.
The answer begins with Ripley Under Ground.
Years have passed since the events of the first novel, and Tom is living comfortably in France.
But respectable appearances can be deceiving.
Tom has become involved in an art forgery operation connected to a deceased painter. When someone begins questioning whether supposedly authentic paintings are actually genuine, the entire scheme is threatened.
And Tom Ripley has never been particularly good at allowing inconvenient people to destroy his carefully constructed life.
One reason Ripley Under Ground works so well is that Tom is no longer simply trying to survive.
He has built the life he always wanted.
Now he has something to protect.
For readers interested in continuing the Ripley series, this is essential reading.
10. A Suspension of Mercy
Writers frequently imagine terrible things happening to fictional characters.
But what happens when someone starts believing those imaginary crimes might actually have happened?
That idea drives A Suspension of Mercy.
Bartleby is a writer living in the English countryside with his wife. Their marriage is strained, and Bartleby occasionally imagines scenarios involving her disappearance and death.
Then his wife actually leaves.
Instead of immediately explaining what happened, Bartleby’s strange behavior creates suspicion.
Highsmith turns that simple setup into an increasingly uncomfortable psychological puzzle involving imagination, marriage, guilt, and perception.
As with many of her best novels, the danger comes partly from the fact that characters make decisions that seem rational to them but look incredibly suspicious to everyone else.
It is a great choice for readers who have already explored Highsmith’s most famous novels and want something slightly deeper from her bibliography.
Where Should You Start With Patricia Highsmith?
For most readers, I recommend starting with The Talented Mr. Ripley.
It is Highsmith’s most famous creation for a reason. Tom Ripley immediately gives you a sense of what makes her writing so distinctive: morally questionable characters, psychological tension, deception, identity, and the uncomfortable experience of finding yourself invested in someone who repeatedly does terrible things.
After that, read Strangers on a Train.
The novel is another excellent example of Highsmith turning an irresistible premise into something far more psychologically complex.
Readers who prefer domestic psychological thrillers should try Deep Water, while anyone interested in seeing a completely different side of Highsmith should read The Price of Salt.
And if Tom Ripley becomes your favorite character, there are four additional novels waiting for you after his first appearance.
Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley Books in Order
Readers who want to follow Tom Ripley’s entire story should read the five novels in publication order:
- The Talented Mr. Ripley
- Ripley Under Ground
- Ripley’s Game
- The Boy Who Followed Ripley
- Ripley Under Water
Although the first novel works perfectly well on its own, reading all five books reveals how Highsmith develops Tom over decades.
Unlike many fictional criminals, Ripley doesn’t simply repeat the same story.
His circumstances change.
His lifestyle changes.
But his ability to justify almost anything certainly doesn’t disappear.
Why Patricia Highsmith Is Still Worth Reading
Modern psychological thrillers frequently feature unreliable narrators, morally ambiguous protagonists, toxic relationships, obsessive characters, and ordinary people hiding disturbing secrets.
Patricia Highsmith was exploring those ideas decades ago.
Her novels don’t always move like contemporary thrillers filled with cliffhangers and constant twists. The suspense is often quieter.
Highsmith lets discomfort accumulate.
A character tells a lie.
Then another.
Someone becomes obsessed.
Someone makes a bad decision.
And eventually the character has constructed a situation from which there may be no escape.
That slow psychological pressure is what makes her novels so effective.
She understood that some of the most frightening characters aren’t monsters hiding in the darkness.
They’re intelligent, charming, seemingly ordinary people who have convinced themselves that what they’re doing is perfectly reasonable.
That is why Patricia Highsmith’s best books remain essential reading for fans of crime fiction and psychological thrillers.
And if you’ve never read her before, The Talented Mr. Ripley is the perfect place to begin.
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