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His stories were good because he imagined them intensely, so intensely that he came to believe them

Rereading this it's clear to see that this first book of the 'Ripliad' is really a 'making of Ripley' story as Tom gradually sheds his unsatisfactory identity - or, rather, comes to sees it as an identity which he can slip on and off at will, becoming 'Tom Ripley', a persona he coolly observes from the outside.

There is no name for the inner man who looks out through Tom's eyes, sometimes reverting to a nervous, stammering, and deeply insecure character who loves art and beautiful things and who considers it deeply unfair that he has been born without the wealth he deserves.

At other times, a more suave and sophisticated persona is emerging, newly born into a privilege and confidence he has created for himself - the ultimate act of self-fashioning built on murder that is never enjoyed but which to 'Ripley' is necessary.

It's well-known that Highsmith saw herself in Ripley, though her acts of intense imagination happened on the page. This is even more fascinating on a reread, not least in seeing how 'Ripley' is born, given what we know of what he will become.
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So cool, so dark, this is one of those books that can be rushed through for the surface story of the suave psychopath, Tom Ripley, and his iconic encounter with poor little rich boy, Dickie Greenleaf (green leaf, ha!) but there's so much more going on beneath the surface that it's worth lingering.

Highsmith is brilliant at inserting tiny moments of unease and offness, sometimes just a word in an unexpected place, and in contrasting her scenes: the dim, smoky bar where Ripley meets Greenleaf senior giving rise to the bright sunshine of Italy where the shadiest things happen.

She also makes fine uses of literary tropes: the eroticised triangle (though where do Ripley's real interests lie?), questions of constructed selves and identities, the outsider who wants to be inside, and the overturning of crime novel structures: here we're in the head - and on the side? - of the perpetrator, holding our breath as the police close in on him...

So much is beneath the surface and we're on tenterhooks for what might float up into view. A masterclass in tension, in refusing to overwrite, in holding back the physical violence so that when it erupts it's sickening, in unnerving the reader as much through exposing our fictional alliances as in the story itself. I've read so many tame imitations of Highsmith's Ripley plot - this original is more dynamic and downright nail-biting than all of them put together!