Category: Ripley’s Reviews

Ripley’s Reviews: “Ripley Under Ground”

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“Ripley’s Reviews” is an ongoing series where I will review every book in Patricia Highsmith’s “Ripley” Series, as well as multiple screen adaptations of the novels. I will post my reviews on the first Thursday of the month, and delve into the twisted mind of one Tom Ripley and all the various interpretations that he has come to life within. Up next is the second book in the series, “Ripley Under Ground”.

Book: “Ripley Under Ground” by Patricia Highsmith

Publishing Info: Doubleday, June 1970

Where Did I Get This Book: The library!

Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: It’s been six years since Ripley murdered Dickie Greenleaf and inherited his money. Now, in Ripley Under Ground (1970), he lives in a beautiful French villa, surrounded by a world-class art collection and married to a pharmaceutical heiress. All seems serene in Ripley’s world until a phone call from London shatters his peace. An art forgery scheme he set up a few years ago is threatening to unravel: a nosy American is asking questions and Ripley must go to London to put a stop to it. In this second Ripley novel, Patricia Highsmith offers a mesmerizing and disturbing tale in which Ripley will stop at nothing to preserve his tangle of lies.

Review: My next installment of my “Ripley’s Reviews” series is, admittedly, a little earlier than it would normally be, as this is the end of the month instead of the beginning of the month. But with Horrorpalooza starting next week I wanted to take on my thoughts on “Ripley Under Ground” now instead of waiting until November. Let’s keep this review series at a steady clip, shall we?

Set a few years after the events of “The Talented Mr. Ripley”, we rejoin Tom Ripley as he is basking in his affluent life that he has built with his inheritance from the Greenleaf family (whose heir apparent Dickie he murdered and stole his identity for a bit), as well as his marriage to pharmaceutical heiress Heloise. He’s been pulling an art forgery scheme to line his pockets as well, and it’s interesting seeing how he is still up to his old tricks and still benefitting from them. Highsmith took a different approach this this one, however, in that instead of climbing his social ladder through misdeeds, we now see Ripley trying to maintain his position at the top. He’s still smarmy and creepy, and it’s so interesting seeing many of those around him just not get that every aspect of his persona is fabricated (and those who DO kind of get it are just as culpable in their own ways). If you enjoyed the first book, there is a lot to like here, though I would argue that it’s not as compelling because we aren’t really getting anything new in terms of his character or his plot line. In this book Tom seems to be perfectly content living his life in rural France with the spoiled Heloise, but once one card from his house is pulled (when an art enthusiast correctly spots the forgeries), Tom can’t help but try and solidify his scheme, but manages only to make it worse. Soon he has a body, a paranoid accomplice, a simpering wife (who returns from her Greek vacation early) AND Dickie Greenleaf’s cousin Chris on his plate.

So this is once again a story about whether or not Tom will be able to get away with it, especially since he now has the paranoid and mentally unstable Bernard Tufts (forgerer turned body disposal buddy) acting incredibly unpredictable in the wake of the cover ups (he is a chimp with a gun, as my friend group likes to say). And once again Highsmith makes the reader actually wait to bated breath to see if Tom can pull it off, and the reader kind of WANTS him to pull it off. I will say this, the plot may have been a little more ho hum this time around, but in terms of his character Ripley is still Ripley and that is a very good thing. Even if his trajectory is well worn territory.

From murder and identity theft to art forgery and more murder, “Ripley Under Ground” was a continuation I had expected more from, but still found a nasty and enjoyable character in Tom Ripley. Next up is “Ripley’s Game”. Whatever shall he get into next?

Rating 7: Not as compelling as the first in the series, but “Ripley Under Ground” is a solid continuation of Tom Ripley, his fraudulent schemes, and his penchant for murdering to keep his lifestyle afloat.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Ripley Under Ground” is included on the Goodreads list “The Vilest Man in Fiction”.


Ripley’s Reviews: “The Talented Mr. Ripley”

This post may contain affiliate links for books we recommend.  Read the full disclosure here.


“Ripley’s Reviews” is an ongoing series where I will review every book in Patricia Highsmith’s “Ripley” Series, as well as multiple screen adaptations of the novels. I will post my reviews on the first Thursday of the month, and delve into the twisted mind of one Tom Ripley and all the various interpretations that he has come to life within. Up first is the first book in the series, “The Talented Mr. Ripley”.

Book: “The Talented Mr. Ripley” by Patricia Highsmith

Publishing Info: Coward-McCann, January 1955

Where Did I Get This Book: I own it.

Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: It’s here, in the first volume of Patricia Highsmith’s five-book Ripley series, that we are introduced to the suave Tom Ripley, a young striver seeking to leave behind his past as an orphan bullied for being a “sissy.” Newly arrived in the heady world of Manhattan, Ripley meets a wealthy industrialist who hires him to bring his playboy son, Dickie Greenleaf, back from gallivanting in Italy. Soon Ripley’s fascination with Dickie’s debonair lifestyle turns obsessive as he finds himself enraged by Dickie’s ambivalent affections for Marge, a charming American dilettante, and Ripley begins a deadly game.

“Sinister and strangely alluring,” (Mark Harris, Entertainment Weekly) The Talented Mr. Ripley serves as an unforgettable introduction to this smooth confidence man, whose talent for self-invention is as unnerving—and unnervingly revealing of the American psyche—as ever.

Review: As mentioned in my intro to this new blog series, I first discovered Tom Ripley and “The Talented Mr. Ripley”, the first in Patricia Highsmith’s “Ripliad” when I was a teenager on Spring Break. It ended up being the perfect beach read, and I was totally immersed in the story of a con artist turned murderer usurping the life on an unsuspecting heir apparent on an Italian extended holiday. There has been a bit of a renaissance of creepy protagonists behaving badly all for the entertainment of a joyful audience, and clearly I picked this up all those years ago and it has followed me ever since. I was curious what revisiting it would be like as an adult with a healthy love of thrillers and despicable antiheroes, and baby, Tom Ripley still wows after all this time.

Cheers you sick bastard (also we will get to THIS specific Ripley in a few months). (source)

As a thriller it is taut and suspenseful and well paced, as we start off in New York and meet Tom Ripley, an aimless twenty something who finds himself asked by a wealthy patriarch to go and fetch his son Dickie Greenleaf, whom Ripley knew in passing and has been gallivanting in Italy on his father’s dime. Ripley and Dickie were barely acquaintances, but a free trip to Europe is too good to pass up, and once Tom arrives he is completely enamored with Dickie and his lifestyle. What starts as an awkward friendship between Tom and Dickie (and Dickie’s quasi-gal pal Marge) slowly turns into Ripley coveting everything Dickie has, which leads to murder, more murder, and identity theft and fraud. Highsmith approaches this with a very matter of fact tone that was in some ways a bit disturbing, but also knows how to eek out all of the tension as Tom does more nefarious things, and flirts more and more with danger as the authorities start to catch on that something is wrong. It’s cat and mouse and part of the suspense is not whether Ripley will get away with it, but whether he is going to be caught. And while that sounds like the same thing, it isn’t really. Because Highsmith lays this out in such a way that it is very likely that the reader will perhaps be more hopeful that he gets away with it.

How is this possible? Well, we of course have to talk about Tom Ripley and the way that Patricia Highsmith presents him to her readers and the audience. He was far more calculated and cold than I remembered him being, basically from the jump being portrayed as a con artist at best (as when he is approached by Dickie’s father to set forth to Italy he is running petty IRS scams on unsuspecting rubes) who sees an opportunity to live off the elite, and then revealing his sociopathic nature as the story goes on. I don’t particularly find Ripley charming or even likable, but Highsmith does write him in a way that managed to still make me kind of want to see how far he could go because she drew him out so well in her characterization. And having read it previously and knowing there are a few more books in the series, knowing he was going to get away with it was galling… but also a little satisfying. Come on, it’s not like the thriller genre doesn’t produce villainous protagonists all the time these days, and Ripley was certainly one of the first, and he still holds up. In this book it’s just a bit of a wicked thrill to see how he slowly takes over Dickie’s life and wealth, even if Dickie (and Ripley’s other victims) certainly don’t deserve it. Highsmith absolutely achieved what she set out to do with this character. I am more than happy to keep following him and see what terrible shenanigans he gets into going forward, because now I am wholly unaware. Bring it on, Tom.

“The Talented Mr. Ripley” was as enjoyable this time around as it was when I was a teenager, and it is a clear foundational work for the modern thriller. It gets under the skin but makes you want to know more. What a ride this ongoing series is going to be. Next up is Book 2 in the series, “Ripley Under Ground”.

Rating 8: A game changer for the Thriller genre and a deep dive into a highly despicable (yet highly entertaining) psychopath and his thought processes, “The Talented Mr. Ripley” still stands tall after all this time.

Reader’s Advisory:

“The Talented Mr. Ripley” is included on the Goodreads lists “Thrillers You Must Read!”, and “I Like Serial Killers”.

Ripley’s Reviews: An Introduction and Brief History

“Ripley’s Reviews” is an ongoing series where I will review every book in Patricia Highsmith’s “Ripley” Series, as well as multiple screen adaptations of the novels. I will post my reviews on the first Thursday of the month, and delve into the twisted mind of one Tom Ripley and all the various interpretations that he has come to life within.

I remember when I was a teenager my family took a trip to California to visit relatives for Spring Break. It was around the time that the film “The Talented Mr. Ripley” had come out, and while I hadn’t seen it yet, the concept intrigued me enough that I got myself a copy of the book specifically for that trip. I have memories of reading it on the beach whilst staying in a house that our families had rented in the small tourist town of Capitola, and how enthralled I was by the story of a man slowly usurping another man’s identity and the murder and intrigue that went along with it. Recently, Netflix put together a new adaptation of the original novel called “Ripley”, which stars Andrew Scott as the sociopathic chameleon, and when that dropped I had an idea: not only was I going to revisit the original story, I was also going to read the whole series. AND watch as many adaptations as I could find. Thus, the “Ripley’s Reviews” series came to be.

Patricia Highsmith: The Creator

Patricia Highsmith is the author of the “Tom Ripley” series, whose works have been adapted over the years with not only “The Talented Mr. Ripley” and all of those forays, but also with the movie “Carol” which is based on her book “The Price of Salt”, and “Strangers on a Train”, one of Alfred Hitchcock’s earlier films. She was born in Texas in 1921, was abandoned by her mother and stepfather to live with her grandmother, and went to Barnard College, which was also when she started submitting her stories to various publications. She struggled with alcoholism, self loathing (as she was a queer woman living with internalized homophobia), and wasn’t exactly known as a genial or well liked person. But she was highly regarded as a very talented writer, and with the successes of “Strangers on a Train” and “The Price of Salt” she made her mark in the writing world. And then in 1955 she wrote “The Talented Mr. Ripley”, which became her arguably most well known work, as well as a character that had unsettling parallels to her own psyche. Her whole point was to make her readers root for a villain, and thus Tom Ripley was born.

Tom Ripley: The Impact

Tom Ripley is the main character in Highsmith’s “Tom Ripley” series, which she liked to call “The Ripliad”. His first appearance was in the aforementioned first book in the series “The Talented Mr. Ripley”, and was followed with four more books: “Ripley Underground”, “Ripley’s Game”, “The Boy Who Followed Ripley”, and “Ripley Under Water”. Tom Ripley is a con artist, who can seamlessly insert himself into unsuspecting people’s lives and slowly take them over. The first book in the series, and the most well known by the public, has Ripley starting his ‘adventures’ when he is hired by the wealthy Herbert Greenleaf to retrieve his cad of a son Dickie from an extended holiday in Italy, as Tom and Dickie once ran in a similar circle.

Once there, Tom becomes obsessed not only with Dickie, but also with the life of opulence and privilege he is living. Tom Ripley is a devious antihero who does despicable acts, but is one of those characters that is so fascinating to follow BECAUSE of how despicable they are. Recent character sensations who fit this mold are absolutely Joe Goldberg from “You” (both series by Caroline Kepnes and Netflix show), as well as Oliver from “Saltburn”, who obsess, covet, and kill all while the audience feels scandalized and enthralled. His impact on the Thriller genre is huge, and he was also one of those characters that felt completely real and in control of the narrative to the woman who created him.

Adaptations: Ripley and Beyond

“Ripley” is the newest adaptation of “The Talented Mr. Ripley”, but Andrew Scott is obviously not the first to step into the shoes of this malicious yet ever so intriguing imposter murderer. Matt Damon played him in 1999, which is very well known. But the adaptations don’t start there. In 1960 the French director René Clément made the film “Plein Soleil” (“Purple Noon” in English), starring Alain Delon as Ripley. And even more interesting to me, DENNIS HOPPER of all people played him in the 1977 film “The American Friend” which adapts the third book in the series “Ripley’s Game” for the screen. Which was then adapted again in 2002 starring John Malkovich as Ripley. It will be entirely dependent on how many of these films I can actually find, but I intend to watch and review as many of them as possible, as well as the Netflix series.

I am quite excited to jump back into the world of Tom Ripley and to go fully into the series instead of stopping at the first. My review for “The Talented Mr. Ripley” will go up in a week from now, and I invite you all to follow me on this journey into the stories of one of the most enduring thriller villains, and antiheroes, of the genre. I hope that you will join me as I jump into what will surely be a strange, disturbing, but really fun adventure as I go into the many worlds of Tom Ripley! -KATE

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