“How’s the peeping, Tom?” Matt Damon, Jude Law, and Gwyneth Paltrow in the film adaptation of *The Talented Mr. Ripley.*

The Secret Lives of Patricia Highsmith

Long-hidden diaries reveal the dark obsessions and deep hatreds she drew from to write The Talented Mr. Ripley and other noir masterpieces

By Edward Helmore

It promises to be one of the literary highlights of 2021 – publication of the diaries of Patricia Highsmith, one of the most conflicted, fascinating novelists of the 20th century.

Highsmith, who died in 1995 having written a series of psychological thrillers, including The Talented Mr Ripley and Strangers on a Train and the romance The Price of Salt, left two sets of diaries hidden in a linen closet in her home in Ticino, Switzerland.