The Cry of the Owl

Description

Reissued to mark the centenary of Patricia Highsmith and the upcoming BBC adaption, Ripley, these beautiful new editions mark Highsmith's entry into Vintage Classics 'Extraordinary... one of her finest novels' Guardian "If everybody in the world didn't keep watching to see what everybody else did, we'd all go berserk." Jenny believes that sighting an owl is a portent of death. When she spots a stranger looking in through her window one night, she believes that he is an omen too. But fate doesn't work in the way that either of them expect. This novel of suspense and paranoia draws on Highsmith's own experience of being a stalker.

Patricia Highsmith was born in Fort Worth, Texas in 1921. Her parents moved to New York when she was six, and she attended the Julia Richmond High School and Barnard College. In her senior year she edited the college magazine, having decided to become a writer at the age of sixteen. Her first novel, Strangers on a Train, was made into a famous film by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951. The Talented Mr Ripley, published in 1955, was awarded the Edgar Allen Poe Scroll by the Mystery Writers of America. Patricia Highsmith died in Locarno, Switzerland in 1995. Her last novel Small g- A Summer Idyll was published posthumously just over a month later.

Patricia Highsmith has an extraordinary talent for the sinister, and this is well revealed in The Cry of the Owl, one of her finest novels -- Robert Nye * Guardian * Patricia Highsmith is a craftsman who has made the suspense novel her own domain * The Times * The basic nightmare situation - to be accused of a crime you did not commit and be unable to prove your innocence- is the subject of The Cry of the Owl... It's Kafka with a vengeance... compulsive * Spectator * A rare talent, a remarkable novelist... her books are written in elegant and lucid prose -- John Mortimer