In The Talented Mr. Ripley, Patricia Highsmith created a serial killer who is extremely anti-social, yet intelligent and charming.Tom Ripley is a young man who lives in New York with poverty. He is also deft con-artist. One day he is caught by Mr. Greenleaf, who ask him to go to Europe to persuade his son - Dick Greenleaf back to America. Mr Greenleaf offers a handsome amount of money, so Tom embarks on the mission.
In a small town called Mongibello in Italy, Tom finds Dickie Greenleaf, who lies happily with his girlfriend. As story goes on, Tom quickly becomes Dickie's friend, and the relationship between he and Dickie gets more and more complicated and obsessive. As a traumatized person, Tom envies Dickie almost in every aspect of his life, and what worse is, he is "abnormally" attracted to him. Unlike the movie version, his attraction to Dickie in original book is not so much sexual, but more platonic and intellectual (of course, Highsmith was not at all into romance, either straight or homosexual).
