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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9780393322446
ISBN number: 0393322440
Label: W. W. Norton & Company
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 288
Printing Date: 2001-11
Publishing house: W. W. Norton & Company
Sale Popularity Level: 424347
Studio: W. W. Norton & Company
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Product Description:
With the savage humour of Evelyn Waugh and the macabre sensibility of Edgar Allan Poe, Patricia Highsmith brought a distinct twentieth-century acuteness to her prolific body of fiction. In her more than twenty novels, psychopaths lie in wait amid the milieu of the mundane, in the neighbor clipping the hedges or the spouse asleep subsequent to you at night.
Now, Norton continues the revival of this noir genius with another of her lost masterpieces: The Blunderer, very first published in 1953 and hailed as her finest novel, about the rise and fall of a faithful suburban husband who plots his wife's demise in fantasies gruesome and eerily serene.
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Rated by buyers -
I read The Blunderer after reading the better known and more highly regarded Strangers On A Train. To my surprise i found it was the better novel.Strangers is more cleverly plotted but it's less "HIGHSMITHIAN".I think it's safe to say that Highsmith went through some changes as a writer and a person between writing her very first and third novels.In Strangers Highsmith still identifies with society to a striking degree.Bruno is the villan and he is a creep.Anne and her family are good and admirable.Guy doesn't want to do bad things and wouldn't but for Bruno.In THE BLUNDERER you know very quickly your in another world.The villan of the piece is not the murderer Kimmel.It's the police detective Corby.Corby is a genuinely vile character.That's interesting because Corby is trying to bring a couple of men he thinks are murderers to justice.The good people have disappeared.At very first you think the protagonist Walter has tried and true friends and business associates.He has a charming new girlfriend.They all abandon him quite quickly once Corby starts to talk to them.This despite the fact that there is no compelling case against Walter.Some friends!Some girlfriend!In The Blunderer Highsmith has written a remarkably compelling tale of pettiness,cowardice and conformism.Walter does himself no favors by his blundering but it's the nearest and dearest who do him in by perversely empowering the moral cretin Corby.Alas Corby is also the novels weak link.What's a Philladelphia police detective doing in Allentown investigating a suspected suicide?Why is his department allowing him to run all over new york and new jersey to investigate crimes unconnected to philladelhia?Why does the newark police department cooperate with him?This is not plausible and winds up being annoying.Highsmith does have a certain weakness for all powerful detectives that gets the better of her.Had she resisted that here i think The Blunderer would have been one of her best novels.As it is it's quite good.
Rated by buyers 
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The story starts right at the beginning with a murder, Kimmel kills his wife near a bus stop on the highway. There's a second case of death, the one of Clara, Walter's wife, is very similar to the very first one, but it isn't Walter who has killed his wife. The whole story around it causes a lot of tension through the whole investigation of the inspector called Corby. His suspicion and his in parts wrong accusations increase the tension more and more.
Gradually Walter loses nearly all his friends and the permanent inquiries of Corby make them believe that he has killed his wife.
You then hope the clever (but brutal) inspector Corby will find out the truth about Clara's death - but instead of the Kimmel, the second suspect, kills Walter. So the end does not satisfy me.
Rated by buyers -
The idea with the man imaginary imitating the murderer he reads in the newspaper is quite original. Also his struggle with the police officer who thinks he's guilty is nice. But after a while the book gets a bit boring und predictable. The writer seems to get out of ideas. The end is surprising but not very enlightening and does not grade up the story.
Rated by buyers 
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This is a superbly crafted novel. It gets under your skin, and like a test for allergies, it makes you aware of sensitivities you never knew you had. I couldn't put it down, I often laughed out loud, and was haunted. She makes an improbable situation most probable. In another writer's hand this could've been dreadful. How did she do it? I am not sure. But that is the magic of Highsmith, and she spins her spell wonderfully in this masterpiece. It has an existential power, a nightmarish texture, and the bite of the best dark comedy.
Rated by buyers -
For Highsmith fans, The Blunderer has just been re-released in a new series put out by Norton press. (Norton is also planning to re-release other Highsmith books for which they have publishing rights.)
My review of the book isn't as positive as those by others who have written before me, but I think this is because I read, just before The Blunderer, The Cry of The Owl, which is similar in plotline but far better written and without the unnecessarily violent ending found in The Blunderer. (Highsmith wrote The Blunderer in 1954 and The Cry of The Owl in 1962; my guess is that in the intervening years Highsmith had time to improve on the plotline.)
Still, The Blunderer is a good read. Highsmith did a great job of showing how two people's lives can suddenly intwine in ways neither individual would ever conceive of if not in the middle of Highsmith's weird, twisted, amoral universe. Highsmith also continues her close-up examination of our inner obsessions that, on occasion, can creep to the surface and wind up completely derailing life as we knew it before.
I recommend The Blunderer for readers who are well familiar with Highsmith's works beyond the well-known Mr. Ripley series. Gain appreciation of Highsmith's "high notes" before taking a look at her earlier works which foreshadow the mystery writer genius of future years.
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