The Talented Mr. Ripley at 70: Why It Still Thrills

When did you first meet The Talented Mr. Ripley?

Perhaps your initial encounter with Tom happened on the page, or you met Patricia Highsmith’s unsettlingly charming antihero in one of his many adaptations. However he first stepped into your life, Tom Ripley remains one of fiction’s most compelling characters.

Today marks 70 years to the day since the publication of The Talented Mr. Ripley, a masterful psychological thriller that reshaped the boundaries of the murder mystery and introduced readers to a character as enigmatic as he is enduring.

To celebrate this anniversary, writing coach Amanda Reynolds takes a fresh look at the crime classic from the dual perspectives of both reader and writer. Discover what makes this novel such a lasting favorite, why the character of Tom Ripley continues to fascinate, and what writers can learn from the tension, characterization, and narrative sleight of hand that secured this book its icon status.

(Warning: spoilers ahead!)

Even after 70 years, The Talented Mr. Ripley still stands up in the genre I love to write and read—crime and thriller. From the morally reprehensible main character to the charismatic yet careless ensemble cast, Highsmith guides us through a virtuoso trail of destruction that pulls the reader into the warped world of Tom Ripley, where the unfairness of inherited wealth and its resultant opportunities and privileges push a flawed man to make extraordinary choices.

A tale of one bad decision leading to another creates a delicate balance of plausibility, action, and creeping dread that tips into fear and horror. So, how do Patricia Highsmith’s novels achieve the seemingly impossible and make us root for the murderous Ripley?

Highsmith is well-documented as a tormented soul, and her backstory explains much of Ripley’s. With a dysfunctional upbringing and sexually ambiguous adulthood, she identified hugely with her male lead, describing him as a version of herself. She even signed letters from both of them, often saying that Ripley wrote his own story, not her.

Through Ripley, she explored many of her own demons using what she described as ‘versioning.’ She was as unapologetic for his failings as Ripley himself. His murders, numbering many through the Ripley books, are dispensed with a calculating coldness. And yet he remains a captivating antihero to this day.

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Introducing Tom Ripley

The first time we meet Ripley, we find him living in an acquaintance’s New York brownstone in much reduced circumstances and on the run from the heavy hand of the law. He fears arrest for a scam that involves making phone calls to a list of contacts and ‘tampering with mail,’ which produces checks he thinks he cannot cash without being arrested.

When an offer comes in to earn some much-needed dollars by traveling to Europe in search of Herbert Greenleaf’s wayward son, Dickie, Tom is in no position to refuse. From this inciting incident, Tom is catapulted into the hedonistic world of the idle rich, where dominoes fall one after another as Tom’s deception and crimes grow ever more audacious and risky.

In a large mirror on the wall he could see himself: the upright, self-respecting young man again. He looked quickly away. He was doing the right thing, behaving the right way. Yet he had a feeling of guilt. When he had said to Mr. Greenleaf just now, I’ll do everything I can... Well, he meant it. He wasn’t trying to fool anybody.
—Patricia Highsmith, The Talented Mr. Ripley

Enter Dickie Greenleaf

In contrast to Tom’s dirty room in a ‘friend’s apartment,’ we find Dickie Greenleaf in a small town near Naples with Marge Sherwood, his beautiful (if equally entitled) girlfriend. Tom’s mission is to convince Dickie, his ‘friend,’ to come home.

Dickie has spent his twenties doing very little other than benignly neglecting Marge and finding his artistic style. He is, understandably perhaps, reluctant to come home to face his responsibilities in New York: a sick mother and his father’s desire that he contribute to the family business.

Tom is struck by this contrast to his own life. He is jobless and homeless, a conman trying to get by, and he and Dickie are the same age: 25. Tom has a talent for mathematics and a vague acquaintanceship with Dickie that he trades on, relying on the fact that:

Something always turned up. That was Tom’s philosophy.
—Patricia Highsmith, The Talented Mr. Ripley

Tom is a crook, that much is made clear to the reader from the first page of the novel, and yet we see touching moments of self-reflection. A good example of this is when he first sees himself as the man he may become on this fresh errand, dressed smartly in a suit.

Tom is a classic underdog. He has few opportunities and certainly none of Dickie’s good fortune—and he has talents, too. He is shrewd and clever, an opportunist. His gift for blending in through impersonation and his ability to disappear, both figuratively and literally, are carefully chosen by Highsmith, foreshadowing the chase to come as the net closes on Ripley’s ever-growing list of crimes.

The 1999 movie adaptation, directed by Anthony Minghella

This film adaptation of the story (which was not its first, nor its last) portrays Matt Damon’s Tom Ripley as menacing if initially diffident and overawed. He is in thrall to Dickie (played by Jude Law), and as Gwyneth Paltrow’s knowing Marge comments:

The thing with Dickie... it’s like the sun shines on you, and it’s glorious. And then he forgets you and it’s very, very cold.
—Patricia Highsmith, The Talented Mr. Ripley

Tom discovers this to be increasingly true as the story unfolds, and Dickie grows increasingly tired of Tom’s obsession with him and his lifestyle. On a fateful San Remo boat trip, Tom’s adoration is cut short when Dickie tells him he will not be joining them on a trip to Cortina for Christmas. The rejection bites deep for Tom, the injustice and unfairness building to a moment of passion and rage that sets the course for the rest of the story—and Tom kills Dickie.  

Tom’s obsession with Dickie has been interpreted as sexual love, but Highsmith never defined Ripley’s sexuality. In Minghella’s version of the story, Peter Smith-Kingsley, a character who is mentioned only in passing in the novel, appears more significantly as someone who becomes very close to Ripley, only to meet his eventual fate at Tom’s hand.

The 2024 miniseries, directed by Steven Zaillian

In the more recent Netflix adaptation starring Andrew Scott, a brooding black-and-white masterpiece, the long-form narrative allows for more nuance in the relationship between Dickie and Tom, while still leaving it open to interpretation.

Whether Tom’s adoration extended to romantic love, and indeed whether he is capable of that kind of love, remains debatable.

A trio of characters

The creation of Dickie and Marge as a couple is the bedrock of the novel. A temporary trinity is formed with Tom, initially highlighting an outsider’s intrusion into their world—one that Dickie embraces and Marge resents—before propelling the story beyond Dickie’s disappearance as Marge, bereft, refuses to accept Tom’s account of events.

The character of Freddie Miles (played brilliantly by Eliot Sumner in the 2024 adaptation, and Philip Seymour Hoffman in the 1999 movie) is an antagonist who embodies the reader’s knowledge about Tom. Freddie, ever suspicious, has never fallen for Ripley’s charms—even before Dickie’s disappearance.

Freddie will not accept Tom’s given narrative, and the scene in the Netflix series where Tom kills Freddie and must dispose of his body is elongated and all the more horrific for it. Both Tom’s vulnerability and brutality are highlighted as he pulls, carries, and drives (and even kisses as subterfuge) the limp but lumpen body to remove it from the murder scene.

In Andrew Scott’s capable hands, this macabre task takes on a poignancy that cuts to the quick of the paradox of Ripley. While he may be a brutal killer and a calculating opportunist, Tom is a born survivor and begs the type of question all great fiction should ask:

What would you do to save your own skin?

One thing leads to another

While no redeeming answer can be given to that question, it also engenders the reader’s vicarious fear of finding themselves in a horrific situation where one terrible decision leads to a whole set of nightmarish events. We do not have to condone the choices of Tom Ripley—it would be impossible to do so—but we can, through the complexity of his needs, in some way understand what has led him to this reprehensible course of action.

Murder is rarely a gateway crime, and Thomas Ripley has been a criminal for years. He’s had to be. And now he is in new territory, as a multiple murderer.

Marge, on the other hand, is a more transparent character. As Dickie’s girlfriend, she loves him and is there for him even after he abandons her—or appears to. Her love is sustained by the hope that Dickie will return from his travels to be with her again. She sees Dickie perhaps more clearly than anyone, and she also recognizes Ripley’s vulnerability. Two men who are very different, and both deeply flawed. She is trusting, but she’s not a fool.

Dickie had the opportunity to redeem himself by loving the beautiful and faithful Marge, and to include Tom in his good fortune, but he chose instead to reject Ripley: a fateful choice.

It’s easy to see why Dickie would tire of Tom. Ripley is needy (rarely an attractive quality), and the class divide is never more clearly demonstrated than in Dickie’s plans for the holidays that do not include Tom. But I do feel for Marge and wonder if, had things turned out differently, she and Dickie would have married and raised a couple of equally indulged children.

Class and wealth

Themes of class and wealth permeate much of the novel. Though he has talents, Ripley considers himself unlucky and asks from the very beginning why his abilities have not been recognized.

Dickie, on the other hand, has a better life simply by virtue of his birth. He is certainly afforded more opportunities due to his inherited wealth, but whether that translates into happiness is another question posed by Highsmith. Dickie is running away from his destiny as much as Ripley, both searching for something very clearly not found.

The two characters are variously described as bored, and both are careless with friends and easily distracted. In many ways, they are the same, yet the yearning they feel is derived from different needs. Dickie lacks purpose and feels trapped by his responsibilities, while Tom lacks means.

Both are unapologetic for their actions—damaged men who take what they want and ignore what they need. It’s this lack of apology that takes the reader with Ripley on his murderous quest to get rid of Dickie, among many others.

The Ripliad: Tom Ripley returns

Dickie Greenleaf never found his true purpose, robbed of his coming-of-age story at the age of 25, while Tom Ripley continued his murderous spree across five novels that spanned almost 40 years of publication.

• The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955)
• Ripley Under Ground (1970)
• Ripley’s Game (1974)
• The Boy Who Followed Ripley (1980)
• Ripley Under Water (1991)

The series, often referred to as The Ripliad, leads the reader deeper into Tom’s disturbing form of logic and his rise from impoverished conman to wealthy individual. As much as we may see him gaining what he wants, does he ever find what he truly needs? It seems unlikely.

He saw four motionless figures standing on the imaginary pier, the figures of Cretan policeman waiting for him, patiently waiting with folded arms. He grew suddenly tense, and his vision vanished. Was he going to see policemen waiting for him on every pier that he ever approached? In Alexandria? Istanbul? Bombay? Rio? No use thinking about that. He pulled his shoulders back. No use spoiling his trip worrying about imaginary policemen.
—Patricia Highsmith, The Talented Mr. Ripley

What makes Ripley so enduring?

Seventy years on from the first and seminal novel, why does Ripley still draw readers both old and new? Why do his exploits still garner lavish adaptations featuring international stars stepping up to refresh the character, with award-winning directors looking for new angles on this perennial story of greed and murder?

For me, it’s because The Talented Mr. Ripley contains all the elements I look for in a thumping good read, and which I also try to include when writing my own stories.

• A main character with charm and logic, however skewed, that within the realms of the character’s often warped reason, still makes sense.
• A stunning backdrop (in this case, the gorgeousness of Italy), often viewed through the prism of fabulous wealth.
• A commentary on the human condition, examining both weakness and desire as well as the purpose we all seek in life.

But perhaps above all this, Highsmith shines a light on the moral ambiguity of the haves and the have-nots, asking why Ripley has been dealt an unfair hand and what he might reasonably do to correct that inequality. It’s a theme that is echoed through many of my favorite stories, such as The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and What Was She Thinking? (published as Notes on a Scandal  in the U.K.) by Zoë Heller.

Ripley is an outsider, looking through the window at a life he covets. He and Highsmith allow readers to access that world and experience some of those same emotions. The Talented Mr. Ripley is, like The Great Gatsby and What Was She Thinking?, one of our chosen Hero Books at The Novelry—books we read many times over in our examination of craft and search for inspiration.

The legacy of Ripley and Patricia Highsmith

I wonder what Highsmith would think of Andrew Scott’s sinister Ripley, or the ever-growing army of readers of her most morally reprehensible character, 70 years on from his publication?

Highsmith was a controversial figure who wrote 22 novels and numerous short stories. She was fascinated by psychology and extreme behavior, and she presented these things to us in Ripley while leaving much to our own imagination, just as every great writer should. She did this without apology and without explanation, leaving space for debate and discussion that will likely continue for the next 70 years and beyond.

Personally, I love Ripley in all his forms. I often turn to him as the original unlikable character. Doubtless, there were those that came long before (Shakespeare certainly had a few unlikable protagonists), but among the greats, Ripley is up there. A modern man who is continually reinventing himself and remains contemporary despite the passing of the years.

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