The boy who followed Ripley

To coincide with the premiere of the paperback publication of 1992's Ripley Under Water ( LJ 10/1/92), Vintage is releasing a brace of Highsmith's earlier adventures of Ripley, the cordial young man with the talent for murder. Dubbed ``especially brilliant'' by LJ 's reviewer, Ripley's Game ( LJ 5/1/74) finds the protagonist continually bungling a hit, while The Boy Who Followed Ripley ( LJ 5/1/80) finds him trying to protect a young man on the run after murdering his wealthy father. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

The Talented Mr. Ripley was grand. The sequels were fine. But this new psychosuspense for expatriate thief-hero Tom Ripley is mostly leaden; you keep waiting for the dark Highsmith magic to rise up--it never does. Near his country home outside Paris, Ripley meets and befriends a 16-year-old American boy. And when some nasty types seem to be after the lad, he moves in with the Ripleys and soon confesses to TR that he's the runaway son of a U.S. tycoon--and that he killed his crippled father (pushed his wheelchair over a cliff). TR sympathizes, tries to get tho boy to go home (but not to confess); the boy clings. And then, just before the boy is about to board a plane home, he's kidnapped for ransom in Germany: TR must rescue him (with a scheme that involves TR going in drag to a gay bar). Finally the boy does go home, and doting TR goes with him, but to no avail; the guilty boy kills himself. . . . No surprises, no tension, and, surprisingly, no depth or conviction in the ambiguous malemale relationship that is usually Highsmith's forte. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.