Kate Evans

Done away with by Ripley.

I find it fascinating because I think it was the writer Edmund White said that Tricia Highsmith was basically Tom Ripley without the charm.

Oh, wow.

That's not even faint praise.

He felt that Ripley was such an autobiographical character.

I'm not quite sure whether I ever wanted to be visited by one of my villains, but I don't know whether I've written a villain that's quite like Tom Ripley.

I mean, he is quite unique when it comes to that sort of sociopathic sort of figure.

But I can certainly understand.

I mean, I'm fascinated now.

I wish I'd got a chance to see Switzerland when it was on stage because the idea of Ripley coming back, I mean, the villain coming back to meet his creator, I think is fascinating.

Yeah, no, the book is very different.

I mean, I think it's quite an astonishing start to her career and even though I think Patricia Highsmith was, I think she was paid a flat fee of $6,000 to sell the film rights and she was quite aggrieved by the fact that this film went on to be so iconic and she didn't sort of earn any more than the $6,000 she was originally paid.

But I think it actually established her.

I mean, it was an astonishing way for a young writer.

She was still basically, I think, still in her 20s when the book was published.

An astonishing start to a career to have a director of Hitchcock's sort of calibre turn your first novel into...

into such a successful film.

And it's an idea, that idea of swapping murders that's been used so often since then.

I mean, even in a comedy like Throw Mama From The Train, which was the Danny DeVito comedy, that was based on that whole idea of swapping murders, which is a brilliant, brilliant sort of concept to launch a career on.

I think it's, you know, very much, you know, it's a product of this idea that, you know, we're all capable of murder, which is something P.D.