This Sweet Sickness: A Virago Modern Classic

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BY THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY, CAROL AND STRANGERS ON A TRAIN 'The No.1 Greatest Crime Writer' THE TIMES ' I love Highsmith so much . . . What a revelation her writing is' GILLIAN FLYNN 'Highsmith was every bit as deviant and quirky as her mischievous heroes' J. G. BALLARD, DAILY TELEGRAPH David Kelsey has an invincible conviction that life is going to work out just as he has planned it - if he can just fix 'the situation'. His one true love, the brilliant, beautiful Annabelle, has married another man. But that doesn't mean they can't still be friends. And even though she is pregnant with her husband Gerald's baby, that surely doesn't mean she won't one day get back together with David. She still loves him, of that he is certain. David is sure she'll take him back, and, under an alias, is setting up a wonderful home for the two of them in a town close by. And everything is just about going to plan until things take a murderous turn, leaving David a desperate man on the run.

Patricia Highsmith (1921-1995) was born in Fort Worth, Texas, and moved to New York when she was six. 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 (1950), was made into a classic film by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951. The Talented Mr Ripley (1955), introduced the fascinating anti-hero Tom Ripley, and was made into an Oscar-winning film in 1999 by Anthony Minghella. Highsmith died in Locarno, Switzerland, in February 1995. Her last novel, Small g: A Summer Idyll, was published posthumously, the same year.

A cracker... a compellingly creepy novel that foreshadowed much of what Highsmith would explore in The Talented Mr Ripley - Sydney Morning Herald A writer who has created a world of her own - a world claustrophobic and irrational which we enter each time with a sense of personal danger . . . Miss Highsmith is the poet of apprehension Highsmith is a giant of the genre. The original, the best, the gloriously twisted Queen of Suspense 'Highsmith was every bit as deviant and quirky as her mischievous heroes, and didn't seem to mind if everyone knew it' - Daily Telegraph