This book is not nearly as frightening as it is unbelievable. We learn what the main subject of the book is very quickly; a perfect murder. It’s supposed to be the perfect crime; you kill my father and I will kill your wife. We are strangers, so we have no link to each other’s victims except this meeting. This is what Charles Bruno suggests to Guy Haines on the train where they meet for the first time, and improbably, they quickly get into a conversation about murdering each other’s burdens. The way Bruno injects himself into Guy’s life after this is sly, but is also unconvincing. We are told that the murder of Miriam (Guy’s wife from which he is seeking a divorce) is Bruno’s first murder. However, Bruno does it with such ease and eagerness that he seems more like a seasoned killer than an amateur. While some read this book to be a deep look at the criminal mind, to me it is more a light skim of human guilt and it’s reactions. The reader is given more description about the superficial things like food and appearances than deep emotional and personal experiences. Later on in the book, when we find out how successful Guy is in his career, it’s surprising because Guy’s life is never described with much depth. There is also a lot we never learn about Bruno or his past, but this doesn’t seem necessarily intentional. While I do see the allusions of incest, specifically in Bruno’s descriptions of his own mother, I never see the homosexual references that everyone seems to describe when talking about Highsmith’s writing. Bruno’s descriptions of Guy seem to be more about envy than attraction. Bruno is fascinated and jealous of Guy’s world, and Bruno lives in that world through his platonic but obsessive relationship with Guy. Also, Bruno’s death is simpler than it should be and seems like an easy way to get rid of a character to allow the book to end the way Highsmith intended. This book is the original, male, and most importantly, less frightening, version of Single White Female. Not the story I expected it to be and certainly not as much depth as a lot of people seem to give it credit for.
Rating 3/5
