Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith was an American novelist and short story writer best known for psychological thrillers, above all her five-novel series following the character Tom Ripley. Her first novel, Strangers on a Train, appeared in 1950 and was adapted into a 1951 film by Alfred Hitchcock, and The Talented Mr. Ripley followed in 1955. Over a career of nearly five decades she wrote 22 novels and many short stories before she died in Switzerland in 1995.