The Blunderer, Patricia Highsmith
The Blunderer, Patricia Highsmith
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The Blunderer

Author: Patricia Highsmith

Narrator: Robert Fass

Unabridged: 9 hr 17 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/27/2015


Synopsis

For two years, Walter Stackhouse has been a faithful and supportive husband to his wife, Clara. But she is distant and neurotic, and Walter finds himself harboring gruesome fantasies about her demise. When Clara’s dead body turns up at the bottom of a cliff in a manner uncannily resembling the recent death of a woman who was murdered by her husband, Walter finds himself under intense scrutiny. He commits several blunders that claim his career and his reputation, cost him his friends, and eventually threaten his life.The Blunderer examines the dark obsessions that lie beneath the surface of seemingly ordinary people. With unerring psychological insight, Patricia Highsmith portrays characters who cross the precarious line separating fantasy from reality.

About Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith (1921–1995) was an American author most widely known for her psychological thrillers, which led to more than two dozen film adaptations. She wrote more than twenty novels, including Strangers on a Train, The Price of Salt, and The Talented Mr. Ripley, as well as numerous short stories.

About Robert Fass

Robert Fass is a veteran actor and twice winner of the prestigious Audie Award for best narration. He has earned multiple Earphones Awards and been named in AudioFile magazine’s list of the year’s best narrations for six years.


Reviews

Walter is an idiot. Kimmel is a psychopath. Corby is a delusional bastard. Clara is psychotic vindictive irksome woman. Ellie is just okay-ish. It's just that Patricia Highsmith can write and keep you reading.......more

Goodreads review by Dave

The Blunderer is what might be seen as a “minor” and certainly neglected novel by Patricia Highsmith (The Talented Mr. Ripley, Strangers on a Train, Carol [The Price of Salt]) I am told was kind of “resurrected” by the Library of America, who published a volume, Four Suspense Novels by Women of the......more


Quotes

“For eliciting the menace that lurks in familiar surroundings, there’s no one like Patricia Highsmith.” Time

“Highsmith’s The Blunderer, like her well-remembered Strangers on a Train has a striking plot idea: a curious intertwining of the motives and methods of two deaths, so complex that it defies brief synopsis.” New York Times

“Highsmith’s novels are peerlessly disturbing…bad dreams that keep us thrashing for the rest of the night.” New Yorker

“Has much of the malevolent intensity of Strangers On A Train and the whim of circumstance does much to victimize Walter Stackhouse, a lawyer…Clever.” Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Offer[s] more of Highsmith’s signature characters in plots where fairly ordinary people perform extraordinary acts of brutality.” Library Journal