Two Faces of January - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0349008086 ISBN 13: 9780349008080

Publisher: Virago Press Ltd

Synopsis

NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING VIGGO MORTENSON AND KIRSTEN DUNST

By the bestselling author of The Talented Mr Ripley, Carol and Strangers on a Train.

''The original, the best, the gloriously twisted Queen of Suspense'' MARK BILLINGHAM

''The No. 1 greatest crime writer'' THE TIMES

''I''m a huge fan'' SARAH WATERS

Two men meet in the picturesque backstreets of Athens. Chester MacFarlane is a conman with multiple false identities, near the end of his rope and on the run with his young wife Colette. Rydal Keener is a young drifter looking for adventure: he finds it in one evening as the law catches up to Chester and Colette, and their fates become fatally entwined.

Patricia Highsmith draws us deep into a cross-European game of cat and mouse in this masterpiece of suspense from the bestselling author of The Talented Mr Ripley.

About this title

From the Back Cover

Three of them are waiting. Rydal Keener is waiting for something exciting to happen in his grubby little Athens hotel. At forty-odd, Chester MacFarland has been waiting much longer, expecting his life of stock manipulation and fraud to catch up with him. And Colette, Chester's wife, is waiting for something altogether different. After a nasty little incident in the hotel, they all wait together. As the stakes-and the tension-in their three-cornered waiting game mount, they learn that while passports and silence can be bought, other things can cost as much as your life.

"Shifts of ground stand metaphor for shifts in relationship; psychology is beautifully interleaved with a gritty genius loci."-Library Journal

"An offbeat, provocative and absorbing suspense novel."-Anthony Boucher, The New York Times

About the Author

Patricia Highsmith (1921-1995) was born in Fort Worth, Texas, and moved to New York when she was six, where she attended the Julia Richman High School and Barnard College. In her senior year she edited the college magazine, having decided at the age of sixteen to become a writer. Her first novel, Strangers on a Train, was made into a classic film by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951. The Talented Mr Ripley, published in 1955, introduced the fascinating anti-hero Tom Ripley, and was made into an Oscar-winning film in 1999 by Anthony Minghella. Graham Greene called Patricia Highsmith 'the poet of apprehension', saying that she 'created a world of her own - a world claustrophobic and irrational which we enter each time with a sense of personal danger' and The Times named her no.1 in their list of the greatest ever crime writers. Patricia Highsmith died in Locarno, Switzerland, in February 1995. Her last novel, Small g: A Summer Idyll, was published posthumously, the same year.

Edition details

• Publisher: Virago Press Ltd
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0349008086
• ISBN 13: 9780349008080
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320