Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith (1950) was her first novel, and has remained, along with the Ripley series, among her best-known works. It has been adapted for film and television several times, the most iconic being the 1951 adaptation directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

This psychological thriller involves two men who meet, not surprisingly, on a train. One of them proposes that they “swap murders.”

This twisty novel marked the start of Patricia Highsmith’s prolific career as a crime novelist, the genre that made her reputation (with one exception being The Price of Salt, the lesbian love story published under the pseudonym Claire Morgan in 1952). Read More→

When The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith was published in 1952, it was a rarity in lesbian literature. Lesbian pulp novels were quite a thing around that time, but in order to pass censors, one of the two protagonists had to either come to a bad end or realize that she was straight, after all.

The Price of Salt, however, was a rare lesbian novel with a relatively happy ending (the couple stays together, but Carol must relinquish custody of her child). Read More→