Kate Evans

James used to always maintain, the wonderful...

British writer P.D.

James, who said we're all capable of murder in the right circumstances.

And this is what Trish Highsmith tapped into so brilliantly in Strangers on a Train, that morally we can all be compromised if the right buttons are pushed.

And also because it's what makes it so intriguing as well is that it has to be murder because murder is the only crime you cannot make recompense for.

You know, it's just so final.

And I think all of those things she plays quite brilliantly here in terms of creating that every man who is suddenly drawn slowly by a more manipulative individual, drawn into this web where they become trapped and have to desperately try to find a way out.

He's very much the Patricia Highsmith sort of character because, you know, she goes back to characters like that time and time again in the novels.

You know, Tom Ripley is that character as well.

You know, although he would always argue, Ripley, that he would only, even though he's called a serial killer, he only kills when it's necessary.

And that's what Patricia Highsmith used to argue as well with Ripley.

And I think Bruno, Bruno, I think, is more psychopathic than that.

You know, he is a great sociopath, I think, than what Ripley, Ripley turns out to be.

Well, it's based on a true encounter.

Patricia Highsmith was working in a children's toy store and a very elegant woman came in to buy a doll.

And Patricia Highsmith was actually working to raise money to have therapy

to try to cure herself of her gayness because she was so conflicted about her sexuality at that point.

I mean, everyone was telling her in sort of in the 1950s that she had to get married, she had to have children, that should be what she was trying to attain.

And she went home that night, she wrote an outline of pretty much the entire book that night.

And even more, the obsession carried on because she tracked down the woman involved.