Tom Ripley, the sociopath serial killer of the series that involved him was required reading for me at college just when I was burning out of reading, and so I didn't appreciate Patricia Highsmith in that moment. The Talented Mr. Ripley film changed my mind and Iwent back into reading that book over as well as all those that followed in which Tom got away with murder.Other of Highsmith's fictions have been turned into films as she catches on with a new generation. Deep Water - which I listened to as an audio book - is not one in which the killer gets away with it, but as I begin to understand what Highsmith was up to with noir, I realize she is playing with the fantasy all of us must have had for at least one second of our lives. And so the reader, safe under the covers on a dreary afternoon, with that necessary plate of crackers and cheese from Trader Joes, and a glass of wine too, listens well and explores the dark side of human nature and wonders for a while - suspense building - exactly when the character will be driven to murder - or at least stand up for himself already. And as in other Highsmith works, when he does get to it, he does so efficiently. In this case there isn't a lot of calculation revealed. Rather we wonder how a husband in a loveless and sexless marriage that he still wants, can take his too youthful wife's blatant cheating, her bringing home of men into their home. He pretends that this open relationship not of his making is actually all right with him.
If it were not this, it would be something else because we all stay too long in some situation that has the potential to break us, wishing and hoping it were not so.
Here is the small town with it's own conceits and protections. It's cliques. It's phoniness. It's sexism. Husband, Vic, is perhaps a "strange bird," but there are those who like him and those who don't, those who believe his wife, those who do not. Those who would not blame him; they would kill their wives if they were caught cheating. Is he just suspicious? Well he has his reason for staying cool and staying married and that is their daughter and to compensate her for her cold and indifferent mother. You get the idea this young woman married him just because, that motherhood was her duty.
Highsmith manages to convince us Vic is a weird character not just because he retreats to his own bedroom every night, sometimes in the wee hours as he has sat up with his wife and the man she brought home all night just daring them to go to her room with him awake.
In there are his pet snails. They seem to do the most fornicating - very slowly.
But do we "like" him? Aren't we encouraged as writers to write characters who are likeable - or at least understandable - or at least worth our empathy? Well Vic is a passive man and he is a literary snob involved in the publishing business - makes me wonder who Highsmith had in mind as she wrote him. As she likes to do there is ambiguity about her male characters' sexuality. Does Vic also need marriage for cover? What kind of love is his? Did he drive his wife into the arms of other men because he doesn't want sex with her?
Will his wife manage to seduce someone who believes her and catch him before he murders again since we are pretty sure he could get the hang of it?
And so Dark Water implies the tides of emotion, the noir, as well as where the dead guy ends up, waiting to bob up into view, which he does. And until then, you will probably enjoy the anxiety of the suspense.
C 2018 Christine Trzyna All Rights Reserved
