Scott Bradfield

Murder most casual: why Patricia Highsmith’s thrillers are so chilling

Richard Bradford uses Highsmith’s fiction to illustrate her perverse nature, but it’s the apparent ordinariness of her villains that makes them so disturbing

Highsmith’s villains are superficially normal people, all of whom mean to do well but end up doing horrible things instead. Credit: Getty Images.
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  • Devils, Lusts and Strange Desires: The Life of Patricia Highsmith

    Richard Bradford

    Bloomsbury Caravel, pp. 272, £20

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