A Suspension of Mercy [Paperback]

Patricia Highsmith (Author)

Book Description

Series: Open Market Edition | Publication Date: August 2001

A major new reissue of the work of a classic noir novelist.

With the acclaim for The Talented Mr. Ripley, more film projects in production, and two biographies forthcoming, expatriate legend Patricia Highsmith would be shocked to see that she has finally arrived in her homeland. Throughout her career, Highsmith brought a keen literary eye and a genius for plumbing the psychopathic mind to more than thirty works of fiction, unparalleled in their placid deviousness and sardonic humor. With deadpan accuracy, she delighted in creating true sociopaths in the guise of the everyday man or woman. Now, one of her finest works is again in print: A Suspension of Mercy, a masterpiece of noir fantasy. With this novel, Highsmith revels in eliciting the unsettling psychological forces that lurk beneath the surface of everyday contemporary life. "For eliciting the menace that lurks in familiar surroundings, there's no one like Patricia Highsmith."—Time "Highsmith's novels are peerlessly disturbing ....bad dreams that keep us thrashing for the rest of the night."—The New Yorker

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

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.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Review

For eliciting the menace that lurks in familiar surroundings, there's no one like Patricia Highsmith. -- Time

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; Reprint edition (August 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393321975
• ISBN-13: 978-0393321975
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #295,373 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Patricia Highsmith (1921-1995) was the author of more than twenty novels, including Strangers on a Train, The Price of Salt and The Talented Mr. Ripley, as well as numerous short stories.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Enjoyable suspense novel, April 26, 2002

By 

Westley (Stuck in my head) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: A Suspension of Mercy (Paperback)

I'm so glad that the works of Patricia Highsmith have been reissued (I particularly love her Ripley series). This book is similar in many ways to the Ripley books - male protagonist who is an amoral American living in the European countryside and married to a European. Sydney is an unsuccessful American mystery writer, who finds himself unhappy in his marriage. His wife, Alicia, is a bit critical of Sydney and he finds his imagination plotting her murder. The suspense comes from guessing whether he will end up killing her and whether he will get away with it. The plot twists are rather clever, although very little of what happens is particularly believable and the ending is a let-down. Despite these flaws, Highsmith's writing style is so smooth and enjoyable that I found myself liking this book a great deal. Highly recommmended for suspense book lovers and fans of the Ripley series.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Another strange Highsmith brew, December 10, 2001

By 

Michael Schau (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Suspension of Mercy (Paperback)

There is something tantalyzing about reading a book that could only be a book; a story that hides behind the fact that you can only know what you are told, never what you see. Is the story-teller of this novel (the original title was, I believe, "The Storyteller") telling us the bizarre and awful things he is doing or is he working out the plotline of a new fiction? Curious characters and situations, and some very odd behavior that stretches your reader's patience. But we do not go to Highsmith to meet conventional people with conventional behavior; we ask her to introduce us to the perverse and psychologically messy people we hope we never meet outside of her pages.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A mystery story without a real murder, November 22, 2004

By 

NKSA "A student" (Aarau, AG Switzerland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Suspension of Mercy (Paperback)

During the whole book one of the main figures, Sydney, thinks about killing other people. Of course, he's a writer he has to imagine such things, other people in the story say. Nearly in every detail he imagines how he would kill for example his wife. And when she leaves him he plays as if she was really dead and it seems as if she was on the way to play this game with him. But his wife isn't dead. She's still alive but she doesn't want to see Sydney again and she doesn't want to come back to her parents because she's ashamed because she has been away for such a long time.
But didn't I buy a mystery story the reader asks himself. He can see that there's a lot of talking about murder but no-one gets killed by an other. Still the book takes an ending in a very special way, in a way no-one would expect it to happen.
So we may say that Patricia Highsmith keeps us on tenterhooks nearly until the end of the book - because we are all waiting for a murder and really don't know if it will happen. And we can also never be sure, that the murder (if it is going to happen) will happen in the way we could imagine it. We are always uncertain about the next thing that will happen. But exactly this is how Patricia Highsmith holds the tension inside of us high, very high.
I really enjoyed this book because it's full of tension from the first until the last page and you as the reader may never know what will happen next. The book is also full of special personalities who are worth to be known by us. The figures have thoughts which I can't imagine that they will cross my mind once but it's very interesting to see how other people may think or react if the situation becomes real or seems to become real.
The book really takes us in another world, a world full of incertitudes although the reader does always know what Sydney thinks. But there are all the other people who think differently about Sydney and this always produces a feeling of incertitude in us. The reader doesn't really know if he may trust Sydney or if Sydney will do a thing to change the image we have of him. This also holds the tension on a very high level. Your feelings will change through the lecture at the end of the book you will think differently about nearly everyone in the book than you did in the beginning! So, just read it and let you be taken through this change of feelings!