The Complete Ripley Novels
By Patricia Highsmith
1520 pages; W.W. Norton

If you have only one summer vacation, spend it with Tom Ripley, that murderously insecure, identity-thieving culture vulture who made his dark debut in The Talented Mr. Ripley, the first of Patricia Highsmith's five Ripley novels, now available in a boxed set. The delicate tissue of lies fashioned by her volatile antihero is set off by the descriptions of the cosmopolitan watering holes where he plies his deadly trade. — Cathleen Medwick