Patricia Highsmith: The Boy Who Followed Ripley

From the Publisher:
In this quietly terrifying exploration of trust and friendship, a troubled young runaway arrives in Villeperce. And when, on the boy's behalf, Tom Ripley is drawn from his lovely estate in the French countryside to Berlin's seamy underworld and into a kidnapping plot that requires the most bizarre methods - and sinister acumen - for intervention, the icily amoral Ripley is transformed into a generous and compassionate protector.

With this psychologically intricate and hauntingly perverse masterwork, Patricia Highsmith warps all notions of friendship, gender, and morality as she explores the relationship of a young man with a guilty conscience and older one who has no conscience at all.

Patricia Highsmith: The Boy Who Followed Ripley. Vintage, ISBN: 0099286599 (February, 2001), 304 p., £7.50.