Strangers on a train - Patricia Highsmith

Image courtesy : Amazon

Strangers on a Train is a psychological thriller about 2 men who accidentally meet each other in a train and how their lives change after that meeting.

Guy Haines, an architect, is on a train to meet his unfaithful wife, Miriam, to discuss about his impending divorce with her so that he can marry Anne.He meets Bruno in the train who is completely drunk. Bruno suggests that he would kill Guy’s wife and Guy should kill his father in turn. Guy laughed off his suggestion and proceeds with his life. However, Bruno takes this seriously and kills Guy’s wife and he forces Bruno to honor his commitments of killing his father. Did Guy kill Bruno’s father and what happens after forms the crux of the story.

The narrative is dark and the writing ensures that the readers are transported to a world where they are tied to the armchair and Bruno is blackmailing us to a murder the person. The first half of the book is simply outstanding. The pace, narration and tension that gets built up in the first half brings the readers to the edge of the seats. The best parts of the book are those where Guy got stuck in guilt and does not know how to make up for the mistake that Bruno committed. The second half of the book fumbles in the narrative and the pace gets reduced drastically as nothing much happens till the last 2 chapters. The conversations like what is a family and what is love are poorly constructed in the final chapters.

This book is ranked amongst one of the best crime thrillers of all time. I started this book with a great expectations but disappointed with it at the ending. A great plot but a wobbling climax.

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