Deep Water - 2022 film review

I read Deep Water during my first 'Patricia Highsmith phase', many moons ago. The novel was published in 1957, when she was arguably at the height of her powers as a novelist. The plot struck me as nothing special, but the presentation of character and situation impressed me. It isn't her best book, but it's a very good one. So naturally I was keen to see what Adrian Lyne's recent film version would be like.

He decided, reasonably enough, to update the story. So Vic Van Allen (Ben Affleck) is now a man who has made a fortune out of developing guidance chips for use in combat drones. Although still young, he has settled to affluent retirement together with his sexy wife Melinda (Ana de Armas) and young daughter. But Vic is moody and Melinda flirtatious and it soon becomes clear that all is not well between them.

Vic is jealous of her flings with other men and he warns off one lover by claiming to have murdered a man that Melinda had an affair with. Is he telling the truth? Probably not, but it's not entirely clear, and there's little doubt that Vic is a man on the edge. Violence isn't far away and Melinda's provocative behaviour causes his behaviour to become increasingly irrational. An older man, a rather annoying writer called Don, become suspicious of Vic and the conditions are created for a deadly confrontation.

The main problem with the film is its lack of pace, the result of a script which seems less than assured and is over-long. Affleck and de Armas do their best with the material, but more could have been done by the writers to make the psychosexual undercurrents in their relationship more compelling. It's not a terrible movie, but it could and should have been so much better.   

The Ups and Downs of a Crime Writer's Life - guest blog by Christine Poulson

Long-time readers of this blog know that I'm fascinated by the rollercoaster nature of the writing life. Few if any authors enjoy unrelieved success - and even those who produce one bestseller after another are often prey to self-doubt. For almost every writer, there are ups and downs, and sometimes the downs are depressing - they can even become career-ending. My firmly held belief is that one has to face up to this reality, rather than ignoring it, because if one accepts that rough patches are inevitable with one's writing (as with one's life generally), one has a better chance of surviving them. With that in mind, I asked my friend Christine Poulson to talk about her own experiences, knowing that she is a writer of real distinction who has not had as many lucky breaks as she deserves. But I am optimistic that they will come her way. Meanwhile, here is what she has to say:

"When Martin suggested that I write about the ups and downs of crime-writing, I hesitated. The ups, yes - the thrill of publication, the pleasure of nailing a complicated plot, the satisfaction when a day’s writing goes well, the friends I’ve made among other crime writers, meeting people who have actually read your novel. I wasn’t so sure about sharing the downs. To lose one agent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two looks like carelessness.

But perhaps my story could be regarded as one of those morality tales the Victorians were so fond of in which hard work and perseverance win the day - or else as an awful warning. Because it all started so well. I found an agent with relative ease. Bob was a lovely man, a legendary agent of the old school, already over eighty when he took me on. He sold the first two novels in my Cassandra James series to Robert Hale in the UK and to St Martin’s Press in the US. But then the crime fiction editor left to go to law school (the irony of it!). She’d loved my novels and the new editor wasn’t interested. They decided not to take the third one. In the UK I was still with Hale, but with small prints runs and no paperbacks, things weren’t looking rosy.

Perhaps it was time to write a bigger, more ambitious novel. To that end, I acquired a young, ambitious agent. Too ambitious as it turned out. Before I’d even finished the novel, she’d quit to join a TV talent agency.

It can be harder to get an agent in mid career than when you are setting out. Suffice it to say that years went by and the pages listing agents in my copy of The Writers and Artists Yearbook had come unglued by the time I gave up and decided to try to place the novel myself. In the end a small independent press took Invisible, my standalone suspense novel, but only as a print on demand paperback and an ebook. For my next novel self-publishing seemed preferable and though there is no shame in that, it wasn’t what I wanted."

And then it happened: in September last year at the funeral of a old friend (who had nothing whatsoever to do with publishing) I got talking to a woman who asked me what I did. When I told her, she said, ‘You must talk to my husband. He’s an editor . . .’ By Christmas I had a two book deal with Lion Hudson. Deep Water came out on 21 October (27 January in the US), I’m hard at work on the second, and I couldn’t be happier with my new publishers.

My story isn’t at all unusual (though I would advise new writers not to bank on meeting an editor at a funeral). Luck in one form or another does play a part in publishing – your manuscript has to land on the right desk. But so does sticking at it and I don’t know if I would have done that without the support of other writers who shared their own stories of disappointment and rejection and told me not to give up (yes, I’m looking at you, Martin!). It helped to know that I wasn’t the first writer who’s had to reinvent themselves. I certainly won’t be the last.

Beautiful Shadow

The experience of listening to the Ripley Mysteries on CD sent me hurrying back to Andrew Wilson’s exhaustive biography of Ripley’s creator, Patricia Highsmith. Beautiful Shadow was first published six years ago.and it is a diligently researched and most capably written study of a writer who intrigued yet perplexed Wilson, as she did most of the people she met – as well as many of her readers.

Wilson is an experienced journalist, but this was his first book. It’s quite an achievement, and benefits from very extensive research. Wilson draws on Highsmith’s very extensive archive of unpublished personal papers, as well as on frank interviews with many close friends, to paint a portrait of a woman who, for all the richness of her life experiences, seems to have suffered a great deal of unhappiness. Wilson charts her often troubled sex life, her various health problems, and her curious upbringing - as well as her obsession with snails.

All that the book lacks, for my money, is a real sense of Highsmith’s place in literary history, and an assessment of her contribution to the development of the crime genre. She possessed a remarkable talent, which is shown not only in the Ripley books and Strangers on a Train, but also in that splendid study of a murderer, Deep Water. I believe her influence can be seen in the work of notable contemporary writers such as Ruth Rendell, but Wilson doesn’t explore this. He is to be congratulated, though, for having written an important book about a major novelist.

One unique feature of the book also deserves a quick mention. This is the only biography of a woman crime writer that I’ve read that includes a topless photo of the subject. You wouldn’t find anything similar in a book about Christie or Sayers, that’s for sure. The picture, taken when Highsmith was about 21, shows an attractive young woman, which makes it all the more sad when Wilson relates that, in her later years, Highsmith’s plainness of appearance came in for comment. Time didn’t treat her kindly, but it should do no harm to her literary reputation, which in the case of such a remarkable writer really ought to be assured.