Where to Start with Patricia Highsmith: The Best First Book for Every Reader

Patricia Highsmith wrote 22 novels across 45 years. They divide roughly into two categories: the five Ripley novels, which form a loose series, and the standalone psychological thrillers and literary novels that fill out her career. Knowing which to start with depends almost entirely on what kind of reader you are.

The good news is that her work is unusually consistent — there are no bad Highsmith novels, and most readers who pick up one find they want to read all of them. The question is which one first.

If you want to read the Ripley series

Start with: The Talented Mr. Ripley

There is no better place to begin. Tom Ripley — amoral, intelligent, aesthetically refined, and utterly without guilt — is one of the most original characters in twentieth-century fiction, and The Talented Mr. Ripley is where he is at his most seductive and most dangerous. A young American goes to Italy on a commission, kills the man he was sent to find, assumes his identity, and proceeds to build a new life without appearing to lose a night’s sleep over it.

The novel is irresistible: beautifully plotted, set across the Italy of the 1950s (Rome, Naples, Venice, Mongibello), and told with the precision of someone who finds Ripley’s logic entirely comprehensible. If you read it and want more, the complete reading order is here.

If you’d rather skip to the best Ripley: Ripley’s Game (the third novel) is widely considered the finest entry in the series and works as a standalone. Many readers begin there.

If you want a standalone thriller

Start with: Strangers on a Train

Strangers on a Train is Highsmith’s debut and the best single statement of her moral universe: two men meet on a train, one proposes they swap murders, and the innocent man ends up as contaminated by the crime as the guilty one. Alfred Hitchcock filmed it in 1951, and it is a great film — but the novel is darker, stranger, and less reassuring.

If Strangers on a Train is the setup, her career is the elaboration: every subsequent standalone novel is a variation on the same question — what is the relationship between the guilty and the innocent, and how cleanly can they be distinguished?

If you want her psychological best

Start with: Deep Water

Deep Water is Highsmith at her most chilling. Vic Van Allen is the perfect suburban husband who allows his wife to have affairs openly — to prevent her leaving — and who, beneath the courteous surface, is something much more frightening. The novel is a portrait of suburban American life as a performance of normalcy under which violence is structurally required.

If you want a single novel that demonstrates the specific quality of Highsmith’s sensibility — the domesticity, the control, the creeping horror — this is it.

If you want her most literary novel

Start with: Carol

Carol is unlike anything else she wrote. Published in 1952 under a pseudonym, it is a love story — a genuine one, ending happily — between a young department store worker and an older woman navigating a divorce. No murders. No psychological monsters. Just two women in 1950s New York, rendered with Highsmith’s characteristic precision and unusual warmth.

If you have seen the 2015 film with Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara, the novel is extremely close to it. If you haven’t, it is a perfect entry point for readers who find crime fiction a barrier.

By reader type

What to avoid first

Don’t start with The Tremor of Forgery. It is her most deliberately slow and existential novel — excellent, but requiring familiarity with her characteristic moral territory before its achievements become legible.

Don’t start with Ripley Under Water. It is the final Ripley novel and its rewards are primarily for readers who have followed the series from the beginning.

Why The Talented Mr. Ripley Is the Place to Begin

For a reader new to Patricia Highsmith, The Talented Mr. Ripley is the place to begin, for there is no better introduction to her distinctive gifts, the chilling psychological suspense, the morally unsettling vision, and the brilliant rendering of the criminal mind. The Talented Mr. Ripley introduces Tom Ripley, amoral, intelligent, aesthetically refined, and utterly without guilt, as he insinuates himself into a wealthy young man’s life with deadly consequences, in a brilliant, disturbing, and gripping psychological thriller. As a first Highsmith, it is ideal: it introduces her most famous character and is a perfect example of her unsettling, psychologically penetrating suspense. It welcomes the newcomer with its chilling antihero, its psychological depth, and its gripping suspense, while introducing the morally disquieting vision that sets her apart. Because it is her most celebrated work and the start of her famous Ripley novels, it lets the new reader meet Highsmith at her most characteristic. For the newcomer, then, The Talented Mr. Ripley is the place to begin.

What to Expect When You Open It

As a new reader, you can expect The Talented Mr. Ripley to be a chilling, psychologically penetrating, and morally unsettling thriller. You can expect a chilling antihero, for Tom Ripley is amoral, intelligent, refined, and utterly without guilt, a brilliant and disturbing creation. You can expect psychological suspense, for Highsmith builds tension through the workings of Ripley’s mind rather than through action alone. You can expect a morally unsettling vision, for the novel disturbingly invites the reader into the perspective of a charming killer. You can expect a gripping plot, as Ripley insinuates himself into a wealthy young man’s life with deadly consequences. You can expect atmospheric European settings and cool, precise prose. You can expect the discomfort of being made complicit in Ripley’s schemes. Expect, in short, a chilling, psychologically penetrating, and morally unsettling thriller, a perfect first taste of Highsmith.

Where to Go From Here

Once The Talented Mr. Ripley has introduced you to Highsmith’s gifts, the natural next step is to continue the Ripley novels, which follow the charming, amoral Tom Ripley through further crimes and intrigues across the series, best read roughly in order to follow the character. Beyond Ripley, the reader who has enjoyed Highsmith’s gifts can explore her many other novels of psychological suspense, including her famous early novel of two strangers and a deadly bargain and her other unsettling, morally disquieting thrillers, each marked by her chilling psychological penetration. Reading onward deepens your appreciation of Highsmith’s distinctive gifts, the chilling psychological suspense, the morally unsettling vision, and the brilliant rendering of the criminal mind. Building a reading journey through Highsmith means following her from The Talented Mr. Ripley into the rest of the Ripley novels and her other suspense fiction. The reader who begins here will find one of the most chilling and psychologically penetrating writers of suspense to follow.

After the first book

• Loved The Talented Mr. Ripley? Continue with Ripley Under Ground → Ripley’s Game → The Boy Who Followed Ripley → Ripley Under Water
• Loved Strangers on a Train? Try The Blunderer, then Deep Water
• Loved Carol? Try Edith’s Diary — her other female-centred novel
• Want the full picture: See the complete reading order

For the full Patricia Highsmith bibliography, reviews, and biography, visit the Patricia Highsmith author page on Editors Reads.

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