People Who Knock On The Door - Hardcover

Patricia Highsmith

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0434335223 ISBN 13: 9780434335220

Publisher: Heinemann, 1983

Synopsis

"Highsmith's novels are peerlessly disturbing...bad dreams that keep us thrashing for the rest of the night." ―The New Yorker

With the savage humor of Evelyn Waugh and the macabre sensibility of Edgar Allan Poe, Patricia Highsmith brought a distinct twentieth-century acuteness to her prolific body of fiction. In her more than twenty novels, psychopaths lie in wait amid the milieu of the mundane, in the neighbor clipping the hedges or the spouse asleep next to you at night. Now, Norton continues the revival of this noir genius with another of her lost masterpieces: a later work from 1983, People Who Knock on the Door, is a tale about blind faith and the slippery notion of justice that lies beneath the peculiarly American veneer of righteousness. This novel, out of print for years, again attests to Highsmith's reputation as "the poet of apprehension" (Graham Greene).

About this title

About the Author:

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

From Library Journal:

Published in 1954 and 1985, respectively, this duo offer more of Highsmith's signature characters in plots where fairly ordinary people perform extraordinary acts of brutality. The Blunderer finds protagonist Walter Stackhouse, who fantasizes about knocking off his wife, in hot water with the cops after the Mrs. ends up at the bottom of a cliff. When Richard Alderman becomes a born-again Christian in People Who Knock on Doors, his family is shattered, leading to a violent outcome.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Heinemann
• Publication date: 1983
• ISBN 10: 0434335223
• ISBN 13: 9780434335220
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256