Classic suspense
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This is the author’s highly acclaimed debut novel. Two men, an architect, Guy Haines, and a psychopath, Charles Bruno, meet on a train to swap murders. Charles will kill Guy’s wife Miriam and Guy will kill Charles’ father. A chance meeting and a rash conversation will trap Guy Haines, almost against his will, in a nightmare. This is a cunningly plotted melodrama and I read it with thorough enjoyment. Alfred Hitchcock shot a film baring the same name and the movie is equally thrilling. Classic suspense is still the best in my view!
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William Robert's great reading
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In this audiobook, Mr William Roberts reads Patricia Highsmith’s “Strangers on a Train” with plenty of enthusiasm and I enjoyed his voice very much. He manages to adapt his intonation beautifully according to the situation, at times tense, then hilarious, then serious again. A great performance.
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dark, disturbing and sophisticated.
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"Strangers On A Train" bears many comparisons with Patricia Highsmith's other great work "The Talented Mr Ripley", in fact it can almost be seen as a precursor to it. Both introduce central characters that are incredibly dark and complex, and both show extreme obsession ending in murder. The character of Charles Bruno in this must surely rank as one of the greatest psychological profiles of a villain/misfit/outsider (take your pick) ever committed to paper, comparable with Graham Greene's portrayal of Pinky in "Brighton Rock", or Alex in Anthony Burgess's "A Clockwork Orange". We know he is a disturbed young man right from the outset, when he meets Guy on the train and indulges in a fatal and macabre "what if?" game with him. There is something almost Faustian about all this, as Guy gets drawn into a deadly game with someone who could almost be the Devil in human form. As the book goes on and Guy gets himself deeper and deeper into Bruno's web, you find yourself asking if Guy is perhaps as innocent himself as he would like you to believe. That this isn't a simple case of a variation on the good twin/evil twin plot, but that Bruno is bringing out a dark side to Guy's character that he deep down wants to indulge. Bruno's own derangement, his alcohol-fuelled deleriums are disturbing, as is his infantile dependance on his awful mother, who wants to keep him forever as her spoilt little boy. There are many classy touches to this book, including Bruno's seeming ability to be able to appear supernaturally inside locked rooms! And I can't see a fairground carousel anymore without thinking of Guy's wife and "The Girl With The Strawberry Curl", or whatever it was. There have been a few attempts to film this, (including a perfectly abominable t.v film in which Guy and Bruno's characters were done as women instead), but Alfred Hitchcock's is the only one worth seeing.
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Cool, dark and compelling
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This may be Patricia Highsmith's first published novel but it shall certainly not be my last. I love everything about Highsmith's style. I love her straight, confident story-telling manner. I love her settings (here it's New York City and other American cities). I love her characters: affluent Americans from another age and the people they rub shoulders with, and I love the chilling world she creates of dirty deeds, guilt and temptation. Until the closing chapter, I really did not know how this story would end, nor did I know how I wanted it to end. I was completely in the hands of the writer, entrapped in her strange world. This book has a lot in common with Robert Louis Stevenson's "The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde". The haunting of the 'good' character by his 'evil' twin is the guts of the novel. In summary, this is a cool, dark, stylish thriller. Highsmith is in excellent form here. This book is perfect summer holiday reading!
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excellent
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Highsmith's ability as a writer is clear in this novel. Her depiction of Guy and Bruno and the claustrophobic atmosphere she creates throughout Strangers on a Train combine to make a compelling read. Read this book, its what crime writing is all about!
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