When was strangers on a train written

But Hitchcock abandons the complex characters of his source material and opts for typical Hollywood fare — a completely innocent man is made to bear the guilt of a crime and must be exonerated. Through the lens of expert cinematographer Robert Burkes, Strangers On A Train becomes a gallery of sensational chiaroscuro, where the story is told through startling and unforgettable images.

Several pairs of strangers on trains keep the audience subliminally connected to the doppelganger idea that runs through the story — double drinks, double murders and double sets of tennis — to name just a few. But the real stars of Strangers on a Train are a cigarette lighter , a pair of thick lensed glasses and a wildly spinning carousel.

The Night She Disappeared. Cutters End. Project Hail Mary. The President's Daughter. President Bill Clinton , James Patterson. A Line to Kill. I Am Pilgrim. Once There Were Wolves. Mirror Man. The Deep. The Burning. For Your Own Good. Private Moscow. While I did enjoy the novel, I felt that Highsmith worked too hard to convey that message, and that it could have been a hundred pages shorter.

Architect Guy Haines is on a train to Texas to see his estranged wife Miriam to discuss their divorce. Before long Charles Bruno, a rich n'er do well, sits down opposite him. Haines talks about his problems with Miriam and Bruno talks about his hatred for his father.

Before long Bruno makes a suggestion: the two men should "exchange murders. Haines strongly opposes this scheme, refuses to participate, and goes on his way. Before long, however, Bruno tracks Miriam down and murders her. He then proceeds to stalk Haines and insert himself into Haine's life at every opportunity - pressuring him to carry out his part of the plan.

To say any more would be a spoiler. The book is a well-crafted psychological thriller with believable well-rounded characters. I wanted to jump into the book and shout at Haines to "get that nutcase out of your life" but of course that would have spoiled the plot. I enjoyed the book. And Alfred Hitchcock made it into an excellent film as well.

Author 44 books Because I am one of those unbearable people who refuses to watch film adaptions of things until I have read the book thing, so now I can watch the movie version of the thing!

Imagine you're on a train minding your own business, an individual struggling to obtain a divorce with your cheating pregnant spouse who's all like, "Okay, babe, we can get the divorce but only if you stay with me until I have the kid because I want the protection and I can ruin you, haw haw haw.

You need this job. And then you meet this drunken but cold-eyed individual who gives off desperation and ruthlessness in equal vibes and you have one of those weirdo-sitting-next-to-you-on-public-transit conversations and he's just bought you dinner and suddenly he's like, "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if someone murdered your spouse for you and oh, by the way, murder my father.

It's tautly written and suspensefully plotted, and even though literally everyone in this book is awful, the hero, Guy the every-guy? Bruno, the stranger, is also compelling. At times, he is magnetic. At other times, he's about to fall apart.

Neither of these guys is a mastermind, so you know there's no way their plan is going to work out-- if they even put it into action! Will they? Won't they? Dun, dun, dun. But the end of the book kind of fell flat for me.

But this one is ok and I think it gives context for the movies, both of which took some pretty significant liberties with the plot, iirc. Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review! Two people in each person. There's also a person exactly the opposite of you, like the unseen part of you, somewhere in the world, and he waits in ambush.

The book has a neat narrative symmetry and logic to it. I didn't enjoy it as much as the Ripley novels, but even without knowing the great body of work to follow this one book, 'Strangers on a Train' contains enough to convince even the most hardened skeptic that Highsmith wasn't just an innocent young writer hoping to make her mark.

Highsmith, it is obvious from the beginning, was a dangerous talent, an unpredictable force prepared to execute on her literary desires and vision.

I can only begin to imagine how this novel dropping in , written by a woman, would have contained its own unique blast zones. What is it about trains? What is it about them that fires the imagination, that suggests to those of a certain disposition the possibility of danger lurking behind every seat and in every carriage?

There is, undoubtedly, something in the collective experience of a journey that lends itself to storytelling, and then of course the tantalizing proximity to strangers of every stripe.

The chance meeting, whether fleeting or prolonged, the accidental brush of hands as the train hurtles around a sharp bend, a casual conversation in the bar car taking an unexpected turn. In Strangers on a Train , her exceptionally accomplished debut published when the writer was just twenty-nine years old, she explored this very idea. The novel begins with a chance meeting between two young men; this fleeting encounter sets in motion a terrible chain of events, their drunken conversation leads to a macabre folie a deux, a good man turned murderous, utterly corrupted by guilt.

Her novels, of which she wrote twenty-two over the course of her career, feel disarmingly fresh and modern, from their high concepts and economic style to her groundbreaking and frequently shocking device of allowing the reader to occupy the mind of a killer.

Indeed, she had met her villain—the inspiration for the despicable Charles Bruno—more than a decade earlier, when on a trip back to her hometown of Fort Worth.