The Talented Mr. Ripley

The Talented Mr. Ripley is a psychological thriller by the American writer Patricia Highsmith, published in 1955. It introduces the con man Tom Ripley, whom Highsmith returned to in four later books.

A wealthy businessman hires Ripley to travel to Italy and talk his son, Dickie Greenleaf, into coming home. Ripley finds the young man living comfortably on his father's money, makes himself useful, and comes to want the life for himself rather than the fee for bringing Dickie back.

The plan he builds is to become Dickie, and it involves the name, the money and what happens to the man himself. Because the novel stays close to Ripley, the reader follows his reasoning even as he does things he should not.

Highsmith wrote four further books about Ripley, collected as the Ripliad, and the first has been adapted several times for film and television. It is the opening book of that sequence.