GENRE: Fiction/Suspense
SETTING: USA
WIKI: link
PURCHASE: link
MY GRADE: A-
READ: 6/2018, 4/2020
FROM PUBLISHER: Guy Haines is a successful architect in the midst of a divorce, and Charles Anthony Bruno, a conniving psychopath who manipulates a chance encounter with Guy into a sadistic plot to swap murders. “Some people are better off dead,” says Bruno, “like your wife and my father, for instance.” As Bruno carries out his twisted plan, Guy becomes trapped in Patricia Highsmith’s perilous world, where under the right circumstances anyone is capable of murder.
MY THOUGHTS/SPOILERS:
Guy's from Texas but lives in New York. He has dark hair and is 29. He's been separated from his 23 year old wife for three years and she's in Texas. She's pregnant by her boyfriend, Owen Markham.
Charles Bruno, who goes by 'Bruno' throughout the entire book, is a 25 year old blond and slightly overweight alcoholic who has wealthy parents, with the money being from his mother's side of the family. He's from New York. He dropped out of Harvard during his second year and doesn't currently work. He hates his father for not giving him money and for cheating on his mother multiple times. His parents may own Bruno Transforming Company, and they make AC-DC gadgets. He's drunk in most of the novel.
Needless to say Bruno is seriously disturbed. He admitted to himself that he likes crises and creating them. He thinks the planning of Miriam's demise gives him a sense of purpose and will fulfill a desire once she's gone. He's even thought about suicide. He misperceives things and believes that Guy is his friend early on when they barely know each other. When Guy wants nothing to do with him he says he was 'used' by Guy, when he wasn't at all. When he feels he's been rejected by Guy he seems to have a mental breakdown. His character's so much more fleshed out in the novel. He's more whiny too, and has outbursts. It's assumed by some, myself included, that he's gay, based on his obsession with Guy and always wanting to be near. Bruno's a character who definitely needed his backstory told and I don't know why it wasn't. We only know he's a mama's boy who likes to stay drunk.
Guy really tried his best to cut Bruno out of his life but in the end, gave in. Oddly, he began to see Bruno as a friend near the end of the novel when before, he couldn't stand to be around him. He got real loose-lipped too, which made no sense.
Guy really tried his best to cut Bruno out of his life but in the end, gave in. Oddly, he began to see Bruno as a friend near the end of the novel when before, he couldn't stand to be around him. He got real loose-lipped too, which made no sense.
Anne is blonde in the book and brunette in the film. She's extremely bland. There's a scene where Bruno sends her an anonymous letter telling her that Guy knows more about Miriam's death than anyone knows. She asks Guy about it and doesn't seem at all concerned when Guy denies it. She's pretty nonchalant in regard to Bruno and I feel she should have been suspicious of him always showing up uninvited or inviting himself places. Anne is different in the film, brighter. Based on not much of anything other than similarities in her sister's eyeglasses and Miriam's, she figured out Miriam's murder. Someone else figured it out in the novel, a detective named Arthur Gerard.
After Miriam's death in the film, the similarities between book and film pretty much end. I wish I knew why the film was so different. The film doesn't show how much Guy cares for Anne. It doesn't delve into Bruno's obsession with Guy, with not letting him go after the bad deeds are done. In the film Bruno's cigarette lighter plays a part but not in the novel. The film has nothing at all on the novel. Novel spans over 1 1/2 years.
I haven't been real excited while reading a book in awhile. I loved this except for the last twenty pages. I had no thoughts on how the story would end and I'm not happy with it at all. A little more thought should have gone into it and one of the two things wasn't believable.
Film spoilers here.
Novel spoilers here.
