by Jill Dawson
First published 2016
Patricia Highsmith arrives at a Suffolk cottage in 1964, seeking solitude for her writing and escape from admirers. She carries a second reason for the retreat: a clandestine affair with a married lover in London. The American novelist discovers that distance cannot silence the disturbing elements that fuel her fiction. Prowlers appear outside her windows. Sexual obsessives and fraudsters emerge from the countryside. Imposters and suicides demand her attention, shattering the rural peace she craved. When Ginny arrives, a mysterious young journalist determined to secure an interview, the situation spirals toward disaster. Yet in Highsmith's complicated world, nothing unfolds as it initially seems. The cottage becomes a stage where her violent fantasies bleed into reality, forcing her to confront the murderous thoughts that drive her imagination.
Genres: fiction, literary-fiction, mystery, crime
Vibes: dark, intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Suffolk, London
Period: 1964
257 pages · Kindle Edition · Sceptre
Content warnings: violence