Forgotten Book - The Blunderer

The Blunderer, by Patricia Highsmith, was first published in 1954. By that time, she had already made her name, with her brilliant debut novel Strangers on a Train. She'd also written, under a pseudonym, a lesbian novel, The Price of Salt, later (wisely, I think) re-titled Carol. A year later she would publish her other great masterpiece, The Talented Mr Ripley. So she was clearly at a very productive and intense stage of her career. And The Blunderer illustrates her strengths pretty well, though it also reveals some of her limitations.

The set-up is, as usual with Highsmith, intriguing. In the first chapter, an unpleasant chap called Kimmel murders his wife, having first taken the precaution of trying to set up an alibi. Attention then shifts to the life of Walter Stackhouse, an affluent, good-looking and personable young lawyer with a rather irritating wife. In due course, the lives of Stackhouse and Kimmel will collide, with devastating results for both of them.

This book begins really well, and I found the central premise fascinating. Unfortunately, I became increasingly irritated with Walter's behaviour. He is a prime example of a Highsmith protagonist who behaves in a manner that is not only self-destructive, but also so obviously so that it is difficult to maintain sympathy with him. The same pattern recurs in books like A Suspension of Mercy and Those Who Walk Away, which I reviewed recently. Highsmith deploys various techniques in her attempt to persuade us to suspend our disbelief. In this early book, I think she is less successful than in the later books. I found my sympathy for Walter draining away, and this diminished my interest in his fate.

That said, Highsmith was an admirably ambitious writer, and even her failures (and this book isn't, in my opinion, really a success) are more interesting than many books where the author is much less daring. More than sixty years after its first appearance, I feel that its prime interest is as an example of a relatively inexperienced novelist grappling with challenges of technique. But this is much more interesting than it may sound. I had very mixed feelings about The Blunderer, but I'm still glad I read it.

Forgotten Book - A Suspension of Mercy

Patricia Highsmith's A Suspension of Mercy was first published in 1965, at a time when she was, arguably, reaching the end of her peak period as a highly original crime novelist specialising in tense stand-alones, in which it's almost impossible to predict the fate that awaits the protagonist. Later, much of her innovative work came in her short stories. But A Suspension of Mercy is a strong book, which I first enjoyed thirty years ago, and relished just as much on a second reading.

It's unusual, for Highsmith, on two counts. First, it's set in Britain - and I must say that she writes well about British life, just as she wrote well about the people and communities in a range of European countries. This novel is one that she wrote while living in  Suffolk, and the setting has an authentic flavour. Second, her protagonist is a crime writer. Sydney Bartleby is a novelist who fancies himself as a TV screenwriter, working in collaboration with a friend. Some of the storylines for his scripts are hugely entertaining; I am sure Highsmith had a lot of fun coming up with the ideas.

Sydney is married to a British woman. Alicia is young and attractive, but their relationship is heading for a crisis. Sydney fantasises about killing Alicia, and starts to behave erratically. His unwisdom becomes painfully apparent when Alicia leaves home without a trace. Has he killed her? The locals start to gossip, and the police take an interest...

This is a classically suspenseful Highsmithian situation. Sydney, like so many other Highsmith protagonists, behaves self-destructively, but his folly is less irritating than that of one or two of her other characters (Walter in The Blunderer springs to mind) because of the stylish, and ironic writing. Nor is there the sense, as there is in some books, that the situation is being dragged out beyond its natural span. The last phrase in the book is "everything was a matter of attitude", and this theme is cleverly conveyed by the storyline. A Suspension of Mercy is, I think, an under-rated Highsmith, and I really enjoyed it all over again.