Patricia Highsmith, the celebrated author of Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr Ripley, was renowned as a suspense writer during her lifetime, yet she was notoriously evasive about the sources of her fiction and refused to discuss her private life. After her death in February 1995, a vast archive of Highsmith's diaries, notebooks and letters was found, extraordinary in their candour and which detail the links between her life and her work. Drawing on these intimate papers, together with material gleaned from her closest friends and lovers, Andrew Wilson has written the first biography of an author described by Graham Greene as the 'poet of apprehension'. Wilson illuminated the dark corners of Highsmith's life, casts light on the mysteries of her creative process, and reveals the secrets that the writer chose to keep hidden until after her death.

"Excellent and outstandingly readable... Brilliant and compelling" - Daily Mail

"An exemplary biography of a tortured, difficult and outstandingly gifted human being... Wilson has fashioned a biography that does complete justice to her uneasy spirit."- Sunday Times

"Highsmith was every bit as deviant and quirky as her mischievous heroes, and didn't seem to mind if everyone knew it. A superb, warts-and-all biography" - J.G. Ballard, Daily Telegrpah Summer Reads

"Scrupulously detailed and written with clarity, Wilson's book makes the case that Highsmith should be considered as essential postwar writer who captured the neurotic apprehensions of her times" - The Times