About the work
The Talented Mr. Ripley is a crime novel by the American writer Patricia Highsmith, published in 1955 as the first of five books about the character Tom Ripley. Highsmith later said the character grew out of a fleeting image of a young man on the beach at Positano, which she observed during a stay in Italy in 1950; the town reappears in the novel as the fictional Mongibello. The novel was published in New York by Coward-McCann in November 1955.
Plot
The impoverished New Yorker Tom Ripley is sent to Italy by the wealthy Herbert Greenleaf to persuade his son Dickie to return to the United States. In the coastal town of Mongibello, Ripley grows increasingly fascinated with Dickie's wealth and lifestyle and eventually kills him during a boat trip in order to take his place. When Dickie's friend Freddie Miles sees through the deception, Ripley murders him too, and secures access to Dickie's fortune through forged signatures and documents.
Cultural significance
The novel was nominated for the 1956 Edgar Award of the Mystery Writers of America and received their Edgar Allan Poe Scroll; in 1957 it won the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière in France, and in 2025 Der Spiegel listed it among the 100 best books published between 1925 and 2025. With Tom Ripley, Highsmith created a killer narrated from his own point of view without moral resolution, adding a psychological dimension to the crime novel; the story has been filmed several times, including as Purple Noon (1960) and The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999).