The Blunderer : A Virago Modern Classic

NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE, A KIND OF MURDER, STARRING PATRICK WILSON AND JESSICA BIEL

By the bestselling author of The Talented Mr Ripley, Carol and Strangers on a Train

''Almost unputdownable. Miss Highsmith writes about men like a spider writing about flies'' OBSERVER

''History will place Highsmith at the top of the pyramid'' A. N. WILSON, DAILY TELEGRAPH

''Peerlessly disturbing . . . bad dreams that keep us thrashing for the rest of the night '' NEW YORKER

For two years, the young, successful and handsome Walter Stackhouse has been a faithful and supportive husband to his wife, Clara. She is distant and neurotic, and Walter finds himself harbouring gruesome fantasies about her demise. Then Clara''s dead body turns up at the bottom of a cliff in a manner uncannily resembling the recent death of a woman named Helen Kimmel who was murdered by her husband. Under the intense scrutiny of the investigation he commits one mistake, then another, until - in true Highsmithian fashion - Walter finds his perfect life derailed. Now Walter is running from the obsessions of the murderer, and the suspicions of the lead cop, not to mention his own increasingly life-threatening blunders.

The Blunderer examines the dark obsessions that lie beneath the surface of seemingly ordinary people. With unerring psychological insight, Patricia Highsmith portrays characters who cross the precarious line separating fantasy from reality.