EricCWelch

Patricia Highsmith, as I have noted before, writes a intriguing set of novels using Tom Ripley as the antihero. Ripley Under the Water is a good example of her craft. Tom and his French wife Heloise, live quietly near a small French village. The only thing one might consider unusual about the house is the presence of a bloodstain on the floor of the basement that Tom explains came from spilling some wine. Indeed, there was wine mixed with the blood for it was with a wine bottle that Tom had killed Mr. Murchison several years earlier. All of a sudden an odd couple appear in the neighborhood and Tom begins to get calls from a man claiming to be Dickie Greenleaf —odd, because Tom had drowned him. Soon this Pritchard has become a positive pest, intimating that Tom is the killer of Murchison, a man who had threatened Ripley's successful painting forgery scam. Pritchard follows Tom and Heloise to Morocco, generally making life unpleasant, but Tom really begins to worry when Pritchard rents a skiff and grappling hooks and begins to drag the canals for the bones of Murchison that Tom knows are there.