Patricia Highsmith Comics. When Highsmith wrote the psychological thriller novel "The Talented Mr. Ripley" (1955), one of the title character's first victims is a comic-book artist named Reddington: "Tom had a hunch about Reddington. He was a comic-book artist. He probably didn't know whether he was coming or going." Highsmith's first novel, "Strangers on a Train", proved modestly successful upon publication in 1950, and Alfred Hitchcock's 1951 film adaptation of the novel enhanced her reputation. Highsmith's second novel, "The Price of Salt", was published in 1952 under the "nom de plume" Claire Morgan. Highsmith mined her personal life for the novel's content.
Patricia Highsmith 1950 and with whom she had an unsuccessful affair designed to hide her homosexuality, believing that Marc Brandel's disclosure that she was homosexual would hurt her professionally. Moreover, Saul Bellow, also Jewish, was a favorite author. Highsmith described herself as a social democrat. She believed in American democratic ideals and in "the promise" of U.S. history, but she was also highly critical of the reality of the country's 20th-century culture and foreign policy. "Tales of Natural and Unnatural Catastrophes", her 1987 anthology of short stories, was notoriously anti-American, and she often cast her homeland in a deeply unflattering light. Beginning