The Talented Mr. Ripley

⚖The case for it

Tom Ripley: charming, calculating, completely amoral. He murders his way to the good life in Europe, and we root for him. Highsmith made the reader complicit in a way no one had before. The Ripley novels transformed the crime genre; this is where they start.

— the canon

✕The case against

Once Dickie is dead, the novel becomes logistics: forged signatures, bank letters, hotel registers, Italian police who would need to be asleep to miss what they miss. Highsmith asks you to grant Tom improbable luck at every checkpoint. Marge exists to be condescended to, and the ending simply opens a door and waves him through.

— the honest librarian