A suspension of mercy

Six years after her death, Patricia Highsmith is in the middle of a renaissance. Since the release of Anthony Minghella's film of The Talented Mr. Ripley, her stock has been steadily rising among readers. Two reissues, A Suspension of Mercy and Strangers on a Train, feed the flames. In A Suspension of Mercy, American freelance writer Sydney becomes obsessed with the putative murder of his English wife, Alicia; in Strangers on a Train, the source for Hitchcock's 1953 classic, one man's guilty conscience disrupts two men's criminal plans. The movie rights to A Suspension of Mercy have been optioned by Warner Bros. for Heyday Films.