Strangers On A Train by Patricia Highsmith (1999-08-12)

Patricia Highsmith enters the minds of two strangers when she skillfully outlines the plot for the perfect murder. An ambitious architect meets with Freddie, a self indulgent, drunken, trust fund reprobate and the resulting chaos that follows a brandy-fuelled idea to pull off reciprocal murders; what could possibly go wrong?Highsmith seems able to enter the vacuous minds of these deplorable pyschopaths and builds the pace to a heart-pounding chase as one of the characters flees the scene of his awful crime and runs through darkened woodland desperately hoping to avoid his pursuers. Gripping stuff!This is a must read.

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This is a thriller about two strangers who meet by chance while on a train, get to know each other slightly, explore the suggestion made by one that a perfect murder could be committed by two people who essentially trade victims, and the consequences of that chance encounter. The suggester of the murder swap ends up killing the wife of the other man and then hounds him constantly in an effort to get him to murder his father in turn. This is a very dark portrait of mid-century America and Patricia Highsmith brilliantly brings out the violent and antisocial psychology lying beneath the surface of everyday interpersonal interactions. It’s also a Freudian story revealing the contradictory and complementary psychological urges of man using this pair of strangers who seem to reflect and replace one another. And finally, there is the guilt and the investigation of the private detective who follows the target of his investigation just as closely as the man with the original idea for the murders followed his target.