Kate Evans

That very much plays into, you know, Highsmith talking about that murder is a kind of making love, you know, that's a kind of possessing, you know, and in a sense that's what she wanted to...

Almost impossible.

I mean, rereading it again, you're suddenly thinking in the days of social media and photographs, the idea that someone could, you know, it's one thing to invent a whole new persona, you can do that, but to become someone else...

You know, I mean, so much of this book is the sort of sliding doors that someone has to make sure that, you know, they're downstairs in the hotel lobby and they never cross paths with someone else because then you realise that Dickie Greenleaf and Tom Ripley are one in the same, you know, that both men aren't still alive.

So I think it'd be very, very difficult to pull off that particular plot now.

I mean, a Tom Ripley-like character, I mean, there are so many of them now in literature because they've all fed so beautifully on from this.

You know, Francis Urquhart in House of Cards and, you know, is a classic example of a Ripley-like figure.

But I don't know whether this plot could work in prison.

Before mobile phones, it was much easier.

I think it's enormous.

I mean, particularly that idea of having a main character who is a villain, but, you know, is a sociopath or a psychopath, but is compelling.

Normally, most stories, you know, the three-word mantra for any writer is to make them care because the moment the reader stops caring about your main character, you've normally lost them.

But that, you know, in the case of Patricia Highsmith, she made us care about Ripley even though he's an odious individual, you know.

And I think when you look at writers that have used that idea and, you know, whether it be Patrick Bateman in American Psycho or Amy Dunn in Gone Girl.

Dexter.

Yeah, the Dexter, Gordon Gekko in Wall Street.

You've got these sort of, you know, they're compelling characters.

You know you shouldn't like them but you find yourself drawn to them.

And it's like, you know, not being able to look away.

It's been a pleasure.