SOURCE: "From Villain to Vigilante," in Armchair Detective, Vol. 24, No. 1, Winter, 1991, pp. 34-8.

Mawr is an American educator and critic who has written works on Romantic poetry. In the following essay, she discusses the development of the character Tom Ripley in Highsmith's Ripley novels, stating that the series shows Ripley's "progression from a villain to a vigilante as the world becomes even too evil for his taste."

Have you ever wondered how the criminal mind works? Patricia Highsmith has. Her first novel, Strangers on a Train, focused on the pathology of a central character; and her only series character, Ripley, is a professional criminal. Some writers might make the hero charming—a bumbling crook, or a swashbuckling villain—but not Highsmith. Ripley is a thief, a murderer; he even takes risks in order to make it all more "fun."

Ripley undergoes some very interesting changes throughout the four-book...