Most of the reviews for Nothing That Meets the Eye praise Highsmith’s characterizations and originality of plot. A reviewer for the Virginia Quarterly Review insists that “the psychological complexity of these stories will satisfy Highsmith fans, as well as those discovering her for the first time,” while Charlotte Innes in the Los Angeles Times describes them as “classic Highsmith fare.” James Lasdun, in his review for The Washington Post, finds that “one of the exhilarating effects of reading Highsmith’s stories . . . is the greatly enlarged sense of her range and energy as a writer” as she creates an “astounding” variety of characters. He argues, “Equally prodigious is her capacity for coming up with the wildly inventive plots that set these creatures in motion.”

Some reviewers, however, found fault with Highsmith’s plot...