A Suspension of Mercy

I don't know why I haven't read more books by Patricia Highsmith, particularly since I'm a big fan of psychological suspense. I found it a very good book, even though I thought it a little far-fetched at first, but then as I started to understand Sydney Bartleby's character and mental make-up a little better, it started to make sense. Since Ruth Rendell passed away, I've been hard put to find an author whose suspense books I enjoy as much. I don't know if Patricia Highsmith will deliver on that but I will definitely be reading more of her books. I did see the film "Strangers on a Train" which was based on a book she wrote. It was a terrific film and I hope the book is just as good. Usually, the books are better than the films, anyway.

Patricia Highsmith's strengths have always been the meticulous development of her sociopaths and psychopaths, and her ability to make the monstrous seem ordinary. In "A Suspension of Mercy," Sydney Bartleby is a married writer whose fertile imagination takes over his psyche. An unsuccessful thriller writer, Sydney is constantly bickering with his wife, Alicia, until she decides one day to leave him for a few months and re-evaluate whether she'd like to stay married to him or not. While gone, Sydney pretends that he had murdered his wife, and disposed of her body wrapped in an old rug and buried it in the woods, all ostensibly as research for a future book. His ghoulish imagination takes complete control of him that he starts acting guilty when Alicia's absence becomes a police matter. From Sydney's neighbor to his closest friends, everyone becomes convinced that he did indeed do away with Alicia. Real life and imagined life converge to the degree that Sydney becomes unhinged (if he wasn't already) and dangerous. I think very few genre writers such as Highsmith can get away with an implausible story (one is immediately reminded of "Strangers on a Train" where two strangers swap murders, and of course, her Ripley series.) And she does get away with these absurdities because in her stories, there's always some undefined terror that's just biding time, hidden in mundane everyday lives, waiting to jump out at just the right Highsmithian moment. I remember reading some article a long time ago that termed this particular ingredient in her books as "commonplace deviancy," which makes them far more disturbing and creepy than those that employ conventional scare tactics. "A Suspension of Mercy," like many in her oeuvre, is Kafkaesque with its hopelessness, absurdities, alienation, persecution, and most notably in how its protagonist "invents a struggle." It is at times funny in a biting and sardonic way. Halfway through, the reader doesn't really know whether Sydney's irrational actions mean he's merely carried away with formulating a plot for a future book or if he's truly going bonkers. Either way, it's an absorbing read--a literary thriller with sharply-drawn characters from an acknowledged master of misanthropy. BTW, there are no happy endings in Highsmith novels (except for "The Price of Salt"), a natural predilection for someone who abhorred the artificiality of justice for the good and punishment for the bad in fiction. Thus, if one wishes such satisfaction, it will not be found here. Highsmith is an acquired taste, I think, for her stories mostly repel by their sheer exaggerated eccentricity, but I'll be darned if they aren't oddly addictive.

One amazing book. ASome wonderful sequences, and a slow, painful descent into confusion and misery and all set up by such a simple, clear premise. The ending is so unusual and so violent you feel a palpable sense of shock. The feeling of an "everyman" trying to detangle himself from a mess is as good as anything Hitchcock ever concocted. Wow.

A frustrated American author meets and marries an English lady, they move into the English countryside so he can write and think, and their marriage gradually dissolves into sarsastic quips, and trivial complaints. Though this is definitely not new, Hightsmith twists this faltering marriage into a nasty game of hide and seek, where the wife takes an extended disappearing act into Brighton, and her folks call the police to investigate. Meanwhile, frustrated write-hubby daydreams and sometimes tells his friends how he may have done away with her. In a wonderfully set English landscape, this seeming innocent situation slowly turns frightening, with a fine cast of characters, including the elderly widow,new next door neighbor. For sheer everyday creepiness, Highsmith is in a class of her own in this non-Ripley mesmorizer.

During the whole book one of the main figures, Sydney, thinks about killing other people. Of course, he's a writer he has to imagine such things, other people in the story say. Nearly in every detail he imagines how he would kill for example his wife. And when she leaves him he plays as if she was really dead and it seems as if she was on the way to play this game with him. But his wife isn't dead. She's still alive but she doesn't want to see Sydney again and she doesn't want to come back to her parents because she's ashamed because she has been away for such a long time. But didn't I buy a mystery story the reader asks himself. He can see that there's a lot of talking about murder but no-one gets killed by an other. Still the book takes an ending in a very special way, in a way no-one would expect it to happen. So we may say that Patricia Highsmith keeps us on tenterhooks nearly until the end of the book - because we are all waiting for a murder and really don't know if it will happen. And we can also never be sure, that the murder (if it is going to happen) will happen in the way we could imagine it. We are always uncertain about the next thing that will happen. But exactly this is how Patricia Highsmith holds the tension inside of us high, very high. I really enjoyed this book because it's full of tension from the first until the last page and you as the reader may never know what will happen next. The book is also full of special personalities who are worth to be known by us. The figures have thoughts which I can't imagine that they will cross my mind once but it's very interesting to see how other people may think or react if the situation becomes real or seems to become real. The book really takes us in another world, a world full of incertitudes although the reader does always know what Sydney thinks. But there are all the other people who think differently about Sydney and this always produces a feeling of incertitude in us. The reader doesn't really know if he may trust Sydney or if Sydney will do a thing to change the image we have of him. This also holds the tension on a very high level. Your feelings will change through the lecture at the end of the book you will think differently about nearly everyone in the book than you did in the beginning! So, just read it and let you be taken through this change of feelings!

I'm so glad that the works of Patricia Highsmith have been reissued (I particularly love her Ripley series). This book is similar in many ways to the Ripley books - male protagonist who is an amoral American living in the European countryside and married to a European. Sydney is an unsuccessful American mystery writer, who finds himself unhappy in his marriage. His wife, Alicia, is a bit critical of Sydney and he finds his imagination plotting her murder. The suspense comes from guessing whether he will end up killing her and whether he will get away with it. The plot twists are rather clever, although very little of what happens is particularly believable and the ending is a let-down. Despite these flaws, Highsmith's writing style is so smooth and enjoyable that I found myself liking this book a great deal. Highly recommmended for suspense book lovers and fans of the Ripley series.