Strangers on a Train

Patricia Highsmith is one of several writers who I’ve read for the first time this year. In her; I have discovered a writer who was a wonderful creator of mood and suspense her characters explored with psychological acuity. Strangers on a Train was her first novel.

Strangers on a Train, is a story I have been broadly familiar with for many years, I vaguely remember having seen the 1951 Hitchcock directed film. I’m sure many people already know the brilliantly simple premise; two strangers swap murders – what could possibly go wrong?

“People, feelings, everything! Double! 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.”

Up show more and coming architect Guy Haines badly wants a divorce from his difficult, promiscuous wife from whom he has been separated for three years. He wants to start his new life with Anne and as his career begins to take off the last thing he needs is for Miriam to hold him back. On a train journey to Metcalf, Texas to meet with Miriam at her request, Guy meets Charles Bruno – on his way to Sante Fe. Bruno is a hard-drinking young man, the son of a wealthy household, he deeply resents his father – and with several drinks already inside him he engages Guy in conversation. Bruno is not an attractive proposition as travelling companion, and Guy is reluctant to engage with him yet gets drawn into a bizarre conversation despite himself. Bruno has a private dining car and invites Guy to join him, here we begin to see Charles Bruno as a very troubling, psychopathic personality. He tells Guy all about his father and how he hates him, and almost against his will Guy finds himself imparting a lot of information about himself and his estranged wife Miriam.

“For here it was now, as clear as it had ever been. And, worst of all, he was aware of an impulse to tell Bruno everything, the stranger on the train who would listen, commiserate, and forget. The idea of telling Bruno began to comfort him. Bruno was not the ordinary stranger on the train by any means. He was cruel and corrupt enough himself to appreciate a story like that of his first love.”

Charles Bruno makes a dreadful, drunken suggestion – they each want rid of someone – so why not help one another out, if he were to kill Miriam there would be nothing to connect him to the crime, it would be a perfect murder. Then, in return a few months later Guy would kill Sam Bruno – Charles’s hated father. Guy is repelled by the suggestion – and fatally doesn’t take it too seriously. Once off the train, he reflects upon the meeting with a shudder, feeling that he has met with evil. Following an unhappy and unsatisfactory meeting with Miriam, Guy travels to Mexico to spend a few precious days with Anne. While he is away, Charles Bruno decides to put his plan into action, and using the small amount of information Guy unwittingly gave him, he tracks Miriam down, and follows her. Bruno’s personality is such that it is the idea of committing the so called perfect crime that appeals to him almost as much as the idea of ridding himself of his father. He strikes.

“People talked about the mystery of birth, of beginning life, but how explainable that was! Out of two live germ cells! What about the mystery of stopping life? Why should life stop because he held a girl’s throat too tightly? What was life anyway – What did Miriam feel after he took his hands away? Where was she? No, he didn’t believe in life after death. She was stopped, and that was just the miracle.”

In Mexico Guy receives a very odd note from Bruno – and soon there follows the most shocking news about his wife. A dreadful idea occurs to him, an idea too terrible to contemplate and Guy immediately holds on to the idea of an unknown maniac stalking the neighbourhood where Miriam lived.

Deep down of course Guy knows the truth about what happened to Miriam, but as the police make it quite clear that they believe Guy to have a perfect motive he isn’t keen to go to them with the preposterous story of a stranger on a train. Guy is running scared, of both the police and of Bruno. Charles Bruno is a manipulative young man, and he begins turning up unannounced, writing letters, gradually increasing the pressure on Guy to fulfil what Bruno considers his part of the bargain. The pressure becomes almost unendurable, and the longer he stays silent of course, the more Guy implicates himself in the crime. Highsmith brilliantly portrays Bruno’s psychological manipulation, how he gradually wears Guy down, turning him into a nervous shadow of himself.

At Guy and Anne’s wedding there is the inevitable uninvited guest – as Charles Bruno ratchets up the pressure. Sending Guy detailed plans of how to carry out the murder of his father, Bruno gets under Guy’s skin – to such a degree that Anne begins noticing that things aren’t right.

Strangers on a train – which I read most of aboard a train, travelling back and forth to Cornwall last weekend – is a brilliantly intelligent page turner. Guy is an ordinary man as the novel begins – ensnared in a terrifying series of events, brought about by the horrifying trap he finds himself caught in. show less

The premise to this story is absolutely brilliant – Bruno, a sociopath, amiably forces himself on Guy, a stranger on the train they’re on, and tells him about a wild idea for a double murder, one in which they each commit one for the other, and get away with it because it will appear random. Bruno wants his father dead for the inheritance, and Guy is struggling to get out of a marriage that his wife is clinging to, despite her infidelity. Guy rejects the idea, but is then sucked into it anyway when Bruno proceeds. It’s a dark, psychological tale with subversive underpinnings, and it’s no wonder Alfred Hitchcock liked it so much. This is a case where the novel and the book are both fantastic, despite the significant changes show more Hitchcock made to the plot after that memorable carnival scene.

Highsmith has a real way with words and peppers the work with wry observations, making it an impressive debut work. The two men revolve around each other with an element of homoeroticism, at least on Bruno’s part, and the crime is threatened by his alcoholism and lack of self-discipline. Meanwhile, Guy, a successful young architect, is a vehicle for Highsmith to show that every man can be made into a murderer. He is threatened by his feelings of inadequacy and guilt ala Rodion Raskolnikov and by messy such an act can be, leaving behind evidence. Highsmith writes scenes like that wonderfully, and keeps the tension up throughout the book. Highly recommended.

Quotes:
On the beauty of a lover (and Scotch :):
“She drank Scotch, when she drank. It was like her, golden, full of light, made with careful art.”

“He thought, she is the sun in my dark forest. But he couldn’t say it.”

On love:
“She turned her head slightly and looked down. On her short cheek, the sunlight picked out the largest freckles, and Guy saw a certain pattern he remembered and had not thought of since a time when he had been married to her. How sure he had once been that he possessed her, possessed her every frailest thought! Suddenly it seemed that all love was only a tantalizing, a horrible next-best to knowing. He knew not the smallest part of the new world in Miriam’s mind now. Was it possible that the same thing could happen with Anne?”

On business and marriage:
“I tell his business, all business, is legalized throat-cutting, like marriage is legalized fornication.”

On murder:
“But didn’t you ever feel you wanted to steal something? Or kill somebody? You must have. Everybody feels those things. Don’t you think some people get quite a kick out of killing people in wars?”

“Do you know what percentage of murders get put in papers? … One twelfth. One twelfth! Just imagine! Who do you think the other eleven twelfths are? A lot of little people that don’t matter. All the people the cops know they’ll never catch.”

“He found himself wondering, therefore, from time to time, if he might have enjoyed his crime in some way, derived some primal satisfaction from it – how else could one really explain in mankind the continued toleration of wars, the perennial enthusiasm for wars, when they came, if not for some primal pleasure in killing?”

“Given the same circumstances, I could break you down and make you kill someone. It might take different methods from the ones Bruno used on me, but it could be done. What else do you think keeps the totalitarian states going?” show less

This just kept getting better and better as I read it. My expectations were probably a little low, given that the setup is so familiar from the Hitchcock movie. I was expecting much of it to be familiar ground. But that’s underrating Highsmith. She’s really good.

Highsmith is good enough that we should leave the Hitchcock movie, much as it deserves on its own merit, aside. There are significant differences between the two.

Patricia Highsmith has, in my experience, an unmatched talent for conjuring unlikable characters. There’s Tom Ripley. And I’m not sure Charles Anthony Bruno isn’t worse. But it’s a kind of unlikability that is hard to look away from.

To sketch out the plot, Bruno and Guy Haines meet on a train, Bruno kind of show more an idle son of a wealthy businessman and Haines a rising star in architecture, still in his twenties. It’s a chance meeting that leads to too much sharing of life stories for Haines’ good.

Guy Haines is separated from his wife Miriam. Seemingly a too-young marriage. Miriam has told Guy that she is now pregnant with a new man whom she intends to marry (as soon as he gets his own divorce). That’s a mess right there.

Bruno doesn’t get along with his father, and he resents his father’s financial control over him, as well as his general disapproval.

Bruno thinks too much, and too much out loud. He hatches a plot, partly out of a thrill-seeking compulsion, to swap murders with Guy. He’ll murder Miriam, and Guy will kill Bruno’s father. Guy wavers between amusement and repulsion, but he plays on, fed in part by drinks in Bruno’s train compartment.

Then, to Guy’s surprise, Bruno fulfills his part of the un-made bargain. Circumstances are going to implicate Guy as well if Bruno gets caught. Bruno pressures and threatens Guy to come through with his own side of the deal and kill Bruno’s father.

Bruno is also clearly obsessed with Guy. Guy is everything Bruno isn’t — a successful professional, and, as it turns out, successful in love the second time around. Bruno has no life’s calling of his own and is incapable of a romantic or intimate relationship with a woman. He daydreams of palling around with Guy if only Guy were free.

The plot moves on a psychological level. On one side, Bruno’s obsession with Guy, and on the other, Guy’s eventual submission to Bruno’s manipulations.

We know Guy’s going to do it, so I’m not giving much away in saying that he does fulfill his half of the partnership that he never agreed to.

It’s hard to look away from, like I said. A tragedy in relative slow motion. Guy is going to destroy himself, and Bruno is in charge. I found myself, despite knowing what’s going to happen, rooting for Guy not to do it, not to be able to do it.

It’s a soul-searching book. Do we think that if Guy could be drawn to do it, we could, too? As a reader, I can’t identify with Bruno, but I can find handholds to grab onto to identify with Guy.

As for Bruno, he is a damaged person — we see some of that in his relationship with his father, his reliance on his mother, and his admitted inability to relate romantically to a woman. But none of that quite makes me sympathetic. His actions, and his thoughts, turn victim into predator.

It’s a battle of wills that Guy is going to lose. Even though he ultimately makes his own decision, he is aware who is in charge. “It had not been his will. It had been Bruno’s will, working through him.”

That doesn’t exonerate Guy. His crime was losing his will. He acted out of Bruno’s will, not his own. He lost himself, his soul.

Having lost his soul, other things start to fall apart for Guy. And I found myself rooting for him again, to find a way to pull it back together. He’s increasingly alienated from his new fiancé, and then wife, Anne, but his secret, and by his now having become someone other than the person she fell in love with.

The resolution isn’t really about Guy’s getting caught or not. And maybe that’s the way it is with any good crime novel. The resolution has to come from Guy’s own reckoning with what has happened and what he has done — that long slide in which he lost his soul.

No spoiler on that count, but I will say that it’s not in Highsmith’s peculiar kind of genius to grant redemption. And it’s not just Guy who won’t be redeemed. It’s the whole world. Guy’s guilt won’t find redemption in a world as amoral as this one.

So, if you’re looking for a light-hearted uplifting story, with lovable characters and lots of laughs. . . . nevermind.

I’ve left out some important and interesting characters — Anne, for the most part, but especially Gerard, the detective on the trail of both Bruno and Guy. I don’t want to spill ALL the beans!

This is a very affecting story, told cleverly, engagingly, and with serious provocative depth. Highsmith is as good as it gets at this stuff. show less

How does an author so fully establish their trademark in a first book? The tension here is taut, the characters repulsive but compelling, and the multi-perspective psychologies thrilling.

It is a testament to the writing that knowing the premise of book didn't affect my enjoyment of the story at all. I was kept on edge, and this book more than her Ripleys made me really question what Highsmith herself was like. Reading her wikipedia page felt not like a surprise revelation but a familiar reacquaintance.

Have seen the Hitchcock a couple of times, but never read the book. (I seem to have found my pandemic genre.) Guy Haines and Charley Bruno meet, and Bruno floats the idea of murder for murder. Guy dismisses it. Bruno has other ideas. A leering and malignant child-man, Bruno is truly scary. The doppelgänger, the lover. Such a bleak view of humankind: "The dark might still overcome the light, it seemed, because the dark was bigger."

Book on CD performed by Branson Pinchot

Architect Guy Haines meets wealthy ne’er-do-well Charles Bruno on the train when he’s traveling to Texas to see his mother and, hopefully, finalize his divorce. Over more than a few Scotches the two admit to their difficult relationships: Charlie hates his father, Guy is trying to convince his wife to give him a divorce. Bruno’s solution: “I’ll kill your wife if you’ll kill my father.”

Oh, what a tangled web we weave! And Bruno is a charming psychopath, who, despite his advancing alcoholism, is not only resourceful and a great detective when it comes to ferreting out information about Guy, but also tenacious.

It’s a wild ride. The suspense comes from Bruno’s clever and persistent show more pursuit of Guy, not just as an accomplice to murder, but as a best friend. He simply cannot believe that Guy doesn’t want to spend all his time with Bruno, as he wants to spend his life with Guy. He behaves like a love-sick boy, and his careless actions are bringing an equally determined detective closer and closer to the truth. Will they truly get away with it? If not, who will get blamed? Who will crack first?

Branson Pinchot does a fine job of narrating the audiobook. He is a gifted actor and his interpretation of Bruno just makes my skin crawl. show less

Patricia Highsmith's first novel (1950) is deservedly a classic and only a year later became the basis for an equally classic Hitchcock movie.

The premise is so well known that there is no reason to worry about spoilers - an educated but weak creative architect accidentally interacts with a sociopathic and far less intelligent rich mummy's boy who manipulates him into a 'quid pro-quo' murder of the latter's father.

The story itself would just be a standard thriller with a clever twist if it was not for the quality of Highsmith's writing and the skilled construction of a psychological relationship that is riddled with repressed homosexuality or, in the case of the architect, repressed bisexuality.

Perhaps the flaw in the psychology (but a show more necessary flaw if the story is to take place) is the one intellectual weakness of Guy, the architect. There are ample opportunities for him to unravel the situation before he crosses the rubicon and murders Bruno's father. He does not.

The only justification I can see for this is distrust of the reaction of American law enforcement to an attempted explanation of events up to that point and it is true that everything we know about the American legal system suggests a man may be a fool to be honest.

Nevertheless, if we suspend disbelief in this one respect, everything else hangs together perfectly and the story twists and turns so that I can tell you what I have told you and know that there is plenty left for you to be surprised by and react to until the final perhaps too easy closure.

The book should be read as a thriller perhaps but better as a psychologically troubling novel of how a persistent psychopath can manipulate an apparently decent and respectable member of society into crossing moral boundaries regarded as central to that decency and respectability.

The relationship between Guy and Bruno (the manipulator) is fascinating in part because from the beginning Bruno seems a rather unattractive character (he is introduced with a boil on his forehead and as an evident alcoholic) and yet he seduces not only Guy but perhaps the reader.

Bruno is a killer from boredom, a mummy's boy, a misogynist, a wastrel, a rich kid who only wants money to spend on being wasteful, and yet there are times we find ourselves feeling sorry for him in his loneliness and his neediness. Guy cannot shake him off and neither can we.

What is remarkable about the book is not the murders or the skilled plotting but the unfolding of the dynamic between the two men and the degradation of Guy into accomplice, murderer and then into a double life that undermines his otherwise perfect rise to social success and a happy marriage.

As the book proceeds, we find ourselves questioning exactly how much Guy is victim of Bruno and how much he is complicit in Bruno's insidious entry into his life. There is no overt homosexuality in the book but critics are right to detect something going on on both sides.

Highsmith has created not only these two complex characters where repressed guilt in Guy (Bruno is incapable of the sentiment) drives the story to its denouement but strong believable characters in Guy's wife, Bruno's mother and the private detective tracking them.

Highsmith never overplays her hand. Each character is rounded rather than a unit of production in a thriller. You sense the dynamics that might take place between them 'off camera' and how these constrain the two main actors.

Though not quite perfect (because of the necessities of plotting a crime thriller) these aspects of the story make the book into quite a serious novel of middle class life, contrasting the idle rich and the rising educated middle class, as America moved towards its 'man in the grey suit' era.

The geography of the book is interesting. People move easily between towns and cities. The plot depends on people being or not being in particular places at particular times. Events happen on yachts. The big cities are contrasted with the American South West. Trains are obviously important.

This is an expansive but lonely America with a distant enforcing State. It is not accidental that justice is represented by a private sector detective. Financial insecurity is ever-present as the situation a man runs from (in the case of Guy) only a couple of decades after the Great Depression.

Consumerism is another theme. Bruno is always buying small accessories for himself or for Guy. Guy is building and fitting out a house for himself and his wife Anne. His paying work is for golf clubs and department stores, his pro bono for a hospital.

Everyone drinks like an episode of 'Mad Men' but Bruno drinks to excess and as a crutch. Guns remain normal even if they are rarely used - Bruno kills by his hands. This is a society moving towards the American Dream but the protagonists are riddled with neurosis and stress.

Having said that, the ancillary characters are actually quite stable. The private detective is dogged and intelligent, acting from a sense of honour to Bruno's father. Anne is almost perfect (though believable) - kind, loving, patient, intuitively intelligent although no walk-over.

Even the flawed first wife, Miriam, may be a small-town flibbertigibbet but she is not bad: she is normal enough. The portrayal of Bruno's mother is cunningly not of someone who might explain Bruno's nature. She too seems shallow but otherwise normal.

Everything revolves around the psychologies of the two men - killer by choice and complicit killer by necessity. Both are troubled. Both are incapable of seeing into themselves, Both are drawn to each other despite the best efforts of one of them.

There is thus a stable decent and normal America into which these two alternately evil and weak men are inserted and whose destiny is to be defeated by it, one by his obsessive need to be noticed and the other by an equally obsessive need to be punished.

I can see why Hitchcock was drawn to it ... show less