Ripley's Game Book

"If blood can produce money through rituals or the so-called human sacrifice, then it is the basis on which we live, so it is very essential to save and protect it from the fiendish eyes of blood sucking predators."
― Michael Bassey Johnson



While this is probably my favorite Highsmith/Ripley novel so far, it is also the most unsettling. She manages - by introducing a new counter-Narrator (Jonathan) - to make Ripley's amorality seem even more fragile and desolate. Jonathan's wife Simone also stands as an interesting counter-spouse to Heloise. Throughout the novel the twisting and sometimes converging tales of Ripley and Jonathan seem like spinning endless mirrors. Each narrator reflecting the existential, blood-splattered flatness of the other. It was brilliant and disconcerting at the same time.