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"For eliciting the menace that lurks in familiar surroundings, there's no one like Patricia Highsmith." —Time In a cruel twist of irony, Texas-born Patricia Highsmith (1921-1995) is being recognized only after her death for her inestimable genius in her native land. With the savage humor of Waugh and the macabre sensibility of Poe, she brought a distinctly contemporary acuteness to her prolific body of noir fiction. Thirty years before David Lynch's Blue Velvet, Highsmith's novels and stories shattered the cool veneer of idyllic American suburbia. Living in self-imposed exile in Switzerland and France for most of her life, Highsmith, from this far-off vantage point, felt the freedom to express her uniquely haunting literary imagination.