Eddie Campbell, Phil Elliott and Paul Grist's Lucifer (Trident Comics, Three Issue Miniseries, 1990)

Speaking of Eddie Campbell and the 1980s British small press comics scene – as I was, after a fashion (I was writing, not speaking), earlier in the week – coincidentally I recently retrieved this from a box in the loft:

Lucifer, a three-issue miniseries written by Mr. Campbell, drawn by his small press compatriots Phil Elliott (#1) and Paul Grist (#2–3), and published by short-lived British comics publisher Trident Comics in 1990. As Eddie himself notes on his (sadly dormant) blog, Lucifer was originally conceived for a different short-lived British comics publisher, Harrier Comics (who published lots of other comics by Campbell, Elliott, Grist and other small press stalwarts like Glenn Dakin and John Bagnall), in the late-1980s but the comic didn't get off the ground before Harrier folded. Trident did manage to publish all three issues – and a trade paperback collection – and at some point I evidently bought them – retrospectively, as back issues; I'd largely drifted away from comics by 1990 (I rediscovered them in about 1997/8) – and stowed them in a comic box.

What's interesting to me about the miniseries reading it now is how it could quite easily have been published as a photocopied small press title in the mid-1980s, sitting on the Fast Fiction table at the Westminster Comic Mart alongside all the other such minicomix (at least to my mind). It has the same freewheeling seat-of-the-pants feel as, say, Fast Fiction Presents the Elephant of Surprise, a "jam" minicomic from 1986 which acted as a kind of who's who snapshot of British small press creators in the mid-1980s, among them Eddie Campbell and Phil Elliott. Lucifer taps into that same sort of "make-it-up-as-you-go-along" energy, an approach to storytelling that was almost the hallmark of the British small press scene, or at least felt like it was; whether or not the comics were in fact tightly plotted I couldn't say.

In the case of Lucifer, the story follows the eponymous lead, "the fallen angel of biblical fame", who wears a suit of feathers "symbolic of my former glory". Hospitalised after having been run over in the street, Lucifer gets chatting to the bloke in the next bed along, who, it transpires, has a carbuncle on the end of his nose which is actually the gateway to Hell. Once the carbuncle has been removed in surgery Lucifer steals it and gains access to Hell, where he usurps Satan, assumes control of the Stygian realm and then effects an invasion of Earth, which entails him embarking on a brief career in television.

I'm not sure I've really done the thing justice there; it's about ten times more entertainingly befuddling than that synopsis implies, wending its illogical way to a suitably slapstick fisticuffs finale. Certainly it's a far cry from the rather better known Lucifer comic, the one published by DC/Vertigo from the late-1990s until the mid-2000s, written by Mike Carey and illustrated for the most part by Peter Gross and featuring as its lead the version of Lucifer created by Neil Gaiman – who, oddly enough, popped up not only in the previous Eddie-Campbell-featuring post but the one before that – on the newly published The Art of Neil Gaiman by Eddie's daughter, Hayley Campbell – and the one before that as well – on a signed hardback of Astro City: Confession – back at the start of July. And to further extend the interlinking synchronicity of this month's posts, next I'll be taking a look at a signed graphic novel by the aforementioned Mike Carey and Peter Gross.

Hayley Campbell's The Art of Neil Gaiman and Eddie Campbell's How to Be an Artist: Signed First Editions (and a Launch Party)

NB: Linked in this Friday's Forgotten Books roundup, 18/7/14.

Well it would've been remiss of me, I feel, having spent three or four years editing Hayley Campbell's fine illustrated biography The Art of Neil Gaiman – which publishes in the UK this week from The Ilex Press – not to get Hayley to sign and inscribe a copy to me. Which is precisely what I did at the book's launch party at Gosh! Comics in London on Friday:

The cock, by the way, was a request – kind of; Hayley had mentioned to me that she'd drawn one in a friend's copy of the book ("Three pubes per ball," she noted. "Classic") so naturally I demanded she do one for me as well. And a fine specimen it is too.

My copy of The Art of Neil Gaiman was just one among many that Hayley signed at the launch; Gosh! photographer Mauricio Molizane de Souza took some pictures of Hayley in action:

and of the crowd in general:

No idea who that gesticulating idiot in the flowery shirt in the background is, but partially hidden behind Hayley is Amazing15's Martin Stiff, who designed the book (the other half of Amazing15, Marcus Scudamore, can be seen far left looking faintly suicidal at having to listen to the aforementioned flowery-shirted idiot), while talking to Hayley is Pádraig Ó Méalóid, who gave notes on Hayley's manuscript, and to his right erstwhile Ilex commissioning editor Tim Pilcher, whose idea the book was. Also at the launch were these folk:

On the right Audrey Niffenegger, who wrote the foreword to the book, and in the middle Hayley's dad, cartoonist Eddie Campbell, whose collaboration with Neil Gaiman, The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains – a performance of which I caught at the Barbican the Friday before (Hayley did a brief Q&A onstage with her dad and Neil at the end) – features in the book. I've mentioned Eddie in passing on Existential Ennui once or twice before; he's one of the most important cartoonists this country has produced (although he emigrated to Australia thirty years ago), indeed one of the most important to ever have worked in the medium. He's probably best known for From Hell, his collaboration with Alan Moore, but his own comics are as good and in many cases even better, drawing on his own life (literally) to create a beguiling mix of autobiography and philosophy. My favorite of his works is How to Be an Artist (The King Canute crowd runs it a close second), which was originally serialized in the anthology comic Dee Vee in the late-1990s and then collected and expanded into this edition:

which was published under Eddie's own eponymous imprint in 2001. It's a rich, wry, affecting take on how a person might choose to become an artist – in this case a comics one – commit to live as an artist and try to make a living as an artist (or not, as the case may be) and how fate has a habit of intervening in all of those things when you least expect it. But more than that it's an evocation of a particular time and scene, one that I still recall vividly and with great fondness: the British comics scene of the 1980s and early 1990s, especially the bit that grew out of the Fast Fiction/Escape small press scene, which Eddie was a part of. I first encountered Eddie's work in various small press anthologies – not least Fast Fiction and Escape – in the mid-1980s (when I was in my mid-teens) bought from the Fast Fiction table at the Westminster Comic Mart, and that formative aspect of his career weaves through the narrative of How to Be an Artist, for me lending the enterprise an additional sentimental appeal.

Anyway, knowing that Eddie was going to be at the launch party for Hayley's book I took along my copy of How to Be an Artist in the hope that Eddie might sign it. In the event he did more than that:

He drew a portrait of himself as well, opposite the similar portrait of a much younger Eddie Campbell on the facing page. It perhaps doesn't have quite the same impact as Hayley's cock, but I shall treasure it equally.

Gosh! Comics launch photos © Mauricio Molizane de Souza.

Reblogged: The Extraordinarily Long Life of Hayley Campbell's The Art of Neil Gaiman (Ilex Press, 2014)

NB: This post first appeared at the Ilex Press blog – earlier today, in fact. I'm re-posting it here for posterity and because I figured it might be of interest to one or two Existential Ennui readers. And thank you to Patti Nase Abbott for linking from this Friday's Forgotten Books roundup.

When you're editing illustrated books, the production lives of the books that you work on can vary dramatically. Some books fly by seemingly in the blink of an eye: the author starts work, they deliver the material, it gets checked/edited/designed/proofread etc. and the book goes off to print, all in the space of a couple of months (I'm looking at you, Jake Spicer's Draw Cats in 15 Minutes). Other books have a slightly more sensible production life – typically about about a year in illustrated book circles, from when the book is green-lit to when it hits the warehouse. Still others require a longer lead time – books like Gary Spencer Millidge's Alan Moore: Storyteller, say, or Helen McCarthy's The Art of Osamu Tezuka: God of Manga – books where the amount of research required, not just in terms of the text but in sourcing images as well, necessitates a schedule longer than twelve months.

And then there's Hayley Campbell's The Art of Neil Gaiman.

The original idea for Hayley's book, which is just about to publish in the UK (it's been out in the States from Harper Design for a month or so), dates back to 2010. Ilex had published the aforementioned The Art of Osamu Tezuka: God of Manga in 2009, and Alan Moore: Storyteller was heading for publication in 2011, and we were pondering which other creators of a similar stature and with a similar background in comics – but who had like Tezuka and Moore made an indelible mark on the wider cultural stage – we could biographise in a similarly visual manner. Naturally Neil Gaiman was at the top of our list. How Hayley came on board as author Hayley herself reveals in this interview with Pádraig Ó Méalóid, and erstwhile Ilex commissioning editor (and British comics legend) Tim Pilcher details the origins of the book over at his blog, so there's little point in my going over the same ground here. Suffice it to say that The Art of Neil Gaiman was eventually green-lit as a project in spring 2011.

Three years later, it finally exists as a printed book.

I must admit I struggle to think of another book that I've edited in my ten-plus years in book publishing that's taken quite the length of time that The Art of Neil Gaiman has. (Matter of fact, it's taken longer than the entire lives of some of the magazines I edited in my prior ten-plus years in magazine publishing.) The reasons for that are many and varied, but a good many of them were to do with the number of people involved. There was Hayley, obviously, and her agent; Neil and his agent; a variety of folk at HarperCollins in the US, including Neil's editor over there; DC Comics and sundry other image rights-holders; Ilex's executive publisher, Roly Allen; and on the creative team copyeditor Jennifer Eiss, editors Ellie Wilson and Rachel Silverlight, art director Julie Weir and designers Amazing15. Add in Ilex's repro and production departments and our press and publicity officer Emily Owen and you have quite the cast list.

Editing books is never plain sailing, but with that number of hands on deck the waters around The Art of Neil Gaiman were bound to be choppier than normal (if I can mix my nautical metaphors). Before Hayley could even start writing the contract with both her and Neil had to be agreed. Then Hayley had to pin Neil down – never a simple task; he's forever flying round the world – in order to interview him extensively and raid his attic for visuals (and oh, the stuff she found up there...). Then once she'd delivered her manuscript the fun really started. There were discussions and deliberations about the first draft of the manuscript; further discussions and deliberations about the second draft of the manuscript; yet more discussions and deliberations over the copyedit of the manuscript; and another round of discussions and deliberations over the second copyedit of the manuscript. Then the book went to design, and there were even more discussions and deliberations.

Tempers frayed at various junctures. There were differences of opinion, disagreements, miscommunications, misinterpretations. Each of us at one time or another was frustrated or exasperated. I myself had an epic email meltdown towards the end of 2013 (one which I rather regret now – sorry everyone). But there was also excitement and anticipation: we all knew we had something special on our hands, and we all wanted it to be the best it could be. It was just how to achieve that that we didn't always see eye to eye (to eye to eye) on.

I'd be lying if I said it was an entirely joyous experience. But what all of the above speaks to, I think, is the passion that all concerned had – have – for the book. We all cared. Throughout the many ups and downs over those three or four years, while in the background governments fell and coalitions rose and economies crumbled and began to rebuild (and on a personal note I became a dad and learned to drive), we never lost sight of the fact that The Art of Neil Gaiman had the potential to be a brilliant book. That it has turned out to be just that is testament to the hard work that everyone put into it – not least Hayley, who has crafted and curated a remarkable document, a funny, moving, visually arresting insight into Neil's creative life. But more than that, I believe our collective passion for the project is reflected in the finished article. You can see it on every lovingly designed page, read it in Hayley's finely honed text; hell, I reckon you can even smell it if you hold the book up to your nose, although that might simply be the sweet, sweet smell of printer's ink.

In total The Art of Neil Gaiman ate up something like a tenth of my life (to date). In Hayley's case it was more like a seventh. Others involved in the process have lived with it for almost as long. Measured simply in those terms, our commitment to the book is self-evident.

Hayley will doubtless go on to write other books – The Art of Neil Gaiman was her first as author, but it won't be her last – but I'm fairly confident she'll never experience anything quite like this one again.

I'm not sure I will either.

London's Gosh! Comics will be hosting the launch party for The Art of Neil Gaiman tonight, Friday 11 July, at 7pm. Hayley will be there signing books, and I'll be lurking in a corner somewhere. Perhaps I'll see you there.

Astro City: Confession Hardcover (Homage, 1997): Signed Graphic Novel by Kurt Busiek, Brent Anderson and Alex Ross

NB: Linked in Friday's Forgotten Books, 4/7/14.

So then. Where was I before I drifted off on that protracted Patricia Highsmith tangent? Ah yes: signed books. Still got plenty of those from my collection to blog about, including a graphic novel or two. Like this one:

Astro City: Confession by Kurt Busiek and Brent Anderson, with cover artwork by Alex Ross, published in hardback by Homage/Image in 1997. This is the second collection of Busiek, Anderson and Ross's still-ongoing – it's now published by DC/Vertigo (and I'm still buying it) – superhero comic book series, which is a kind of extended love letter to the form and an extension of Busiek's preoccupation with the superhero fable as related from the perspective of the common man (or woman) (see also Marvels, 1994, which was illustrated by Ross). The main story collected within still stands as perhaps the best of the entire Astro City run, an exploration of the Batman myth as told from the point of view of a boy sidekick – one Brian Kinney, who arrives in Astro City full of hope and soon finds himself fighting crime alongside the mysterious Confessor.

I must have bought this copy – possibly in London's Forbidden Planet – not long after it was published, which would have been roundabout when I got back into comics after a ten-year break; limited to 1200 copies, the book is signed on the tip-in sheet by all three creators:

I have a particular reason for showing it off now, after all this time – other than it's signed and I've never blogged about it before – which I'll come to shortly, but it's worth dwelling a moment on the collectability of the thing. Unlike other collections of Astro City (including the first one, Life in the Big City), this edition marks the only time the Confession storyline has appeared in hardcover (to date). Accordingly it's quite hard to get hold of, at least affordably: the cheapest copy I can see online at present is north of £150. Of course, price often isn't necessarily a reliable indicator of anything other than the algorithms of Amazon Marketplace, but it does seem that over fifteen years on from publication the Confession hardcover remains an object of desire: witness these enthusiastic posts on it at The Next Great Adventure Blog! and The Alex Ross Collector, the latter of whom was kind enough to scan Alex Ross's jaw-dropping dust jacket design in its glorious entirety:

My other reason for showcasing the book right now is to do with the introduction, which was written by Neil Gaiman – not so much because of what Neil wrote, eloquent and insightful though it is as regards how stories can "mean more than they literally mean", but because Neil has been much on my mind of late. Actually I say "of late": he's been much on my mind for more than three years, i.e. the length of time that I've been editing a just-about-to-be-published (in the UK; it's been out in the US since late May) book called The Art of Neil Gaiman, a lavishly illustrated biography by Hayley Campbell, about which I'll be blogging very soon.

Ripley's Game and The American Friend: the Films and the Book (by Patricia Highsmith)

To round off what's become quite a protracted run of posts on Patricia Highsmith – links to previous missives in the run can be found at the bottom of this post, should anyone be remotely interested – I thought I'd take a look at two different film adaptations of my favourite of Highsmith's novels – indeed my favourite novel full stop: the third Tom Ripley novel, Ripley's Game (1974). One of those film adaptations, the eponymous 2002 version, directed by Liliana Cavani, I've seen a few times over the years (and watched again recently); the other, Wim Wenders' The American Friend (1977), I only saw for the first time last week. To be honest I was in two minds as to whether or not to post anything about either of them – there are doubtless plenty of reviews already available online. But what there doesn't seem to be so much of is comparison between the two and to the source text, and so here, for what they're worth, are some notes and thoughts along those lines.

For a start, though derived from the same source and following essentially the same story, The American Friend and Ripley's Game are very different films – the former a, for want of a better term, arthouse film, the latter I guess an old school Euro-thriller, albeit one directed by ostensibly an arthouse director (Cavani's credits include 1974's The Night Porter). I suppose one illustration of this might be how each film handles the pivotal scene early on where Jonathan Trevanny – in the book and in Cavani's film; in Wenders' film he's Jonathan Zimmerman – unwittingly makes a nemesis of Tom Ripley. Cavani correctly locates this scene in Jonathan's kitchen during a party, but then embellishes it, depicting a drunken Jonathan – played by Dougray Scott – deriding Tom's lack of taste to a cabal of cackling cronies, only for Tom – John Malkovich – to overhear and icily challenge him. Wenders relocates the scene to an auction room, but has Bruno Ganz as Jonathan underplay the offhand slight in the same fashion as the novel: upon being introduced to Tom – played by Dennis Hopper – Jonathan ignores Tom's proffered hand and mutters, "Oh yes, I've heard of you."

On the commentary track on the DVD of The American Friend Wim Wenders remarks of this scene, "That's what I love about Patricia Highsmith, to invent a whole story out of such a little incident: a man's pride is hurt." It's clear that Wenders is something of a fan of Highsmith, but Ripley's Game wasn't his first choice of her novels to adapt. His favourite Highsmith novel was The Cry of the Owl (1962), but the film rights to that book weren't available – and nor were the rights to his second favourite Highsmith novel, The Tremor of Forgery (1969), or his third favourite, or fourth, and so on. Eventually he met Highsmith and she explained that the only novel of hers where the rights were still available was the one she had just finished, because no one else had read it yet. She then pulled the manuscript of Ripley's Game out of her bag.

Cavani was also a Highsmith fan prior to filming her version of the book – "I love Patricia Highsmith and have read most of her books," she told an audience at the Boston International Festival of Women's Film in 2003 – but unlike Wenders she didn't actively pursue a Highsmith novel herself; Ripley's Game was brought to her by producer Ileen Maisel. What Cavani isn't a fan of, however, is Wenders' film. She told the film critic Gerald Peary: "I saw the Wenders film when it came out, but I didn’t like it very much. I don’t think Wenders quite centred on what Highsmith meant. He’d almost fallen in love with this cowboy character. It’s a reflection of those years, the 1970s, German directors discovering American directors and writers."

Highsmith herself wasn't exactly enamoured of Dennis Hopper's Stetson-wearing Ripley either – at least not at first; after an initially adverse reaction to The American Friend she later wrote to Wenders and admitted that she'd been wrong, even to the extent that she thought Hopper had captured the essence of Ripley, the soul of the character. I can kind of see what she means in some scenes, especially the first encounter between Tom and Jonathan in the latter's picture-framing shop: for me that's where Hopper is closest to the Ripley of the page – his reserved nature, the way he smiles at Jonathan. It's no coincidence that that was actually the first scene Hopper shot in the film: in those early days of the production he was sticking closest to the Tom of the novel and of Wenders' original script; thereafter his performance became more improvisational, while Wenders for his part was rewriting daily, the two striving to reach the "truth" of the character as they saw him.

According to Liliana Cavani there was plenty of rewriting on Ripley's Game too – she worked extensively on the script with the screenwriter, Charles McKeown – but at least in terms of that script there was apparently no improvisation on the part of Malkovich. How much of his performance was down to the writing, the direction or his own choices I couldn't say, but certainly Tom's malevolence is brought to the fore, Malkovich casually issuing threats to all and sundry (something the Tom of the books would never do) and even at one point providing (to Jonathan) a pithy summary of his character as the filmmakers saw him: "I'm a creation. A gifted improviser. I lack your conscience and, when I was young, that troubled me. It no longer does. I don't worry about being caught because I don't think anyone is watching."

A creation... a gifted improviser... lack of conscience: all this sounds like the Tom of the books, but what is lacking in Malkovich's portrayal is Tom's unexpected gregariousness and warmth. In the Ripliad people genuinely seem to like Tom; in Ripley's Game (the film) only his wife does, although arguably Jonathan warms to him. It's hard to imagine anyone else doing so though – and almost as hard to imagine anyone warming to Dennis Hopper's Tom: a loner with a penchant for recording his own rambling thoughts on dictaphone and reel-to-reel, living in a dilapidated city mansion lit by neon signs and flickering TV screens. Though again Jonathan does warm to Tom, even more so than in Cavani's version.

On the commentary track for The American Friend Wenders notes that he originally thought of John Cassavetes for the role of Ripley, which would have been interesting. In the event Cassavetes passed and suggested Hopper instead – another film actor who also directed. And in fact Wenders cast a number of film actor-directors and directors in the movie, all of them playing ne'er-do-wells of one type or another. The French actor-director Gérard Blain plays Tom's criminal associate Raoul Minot (Reeves Minot in the Ripliad); Sam Fuller, of Shock Corridor fame, plays the gangster Jonathan is supposed to murder on the train (with Tom's assistance); and Nicholas Ray plays Derwatt, the painter-forger Tom is in league with.

Ripliad enthusiasts might raise an eyebrow at that last one, because Derwatt is actually a character from the previous Tom Ripley novel, Ripley Under Ground. He's not a forger in that novel either; he's a deceased painter who is forged by another painter, Bernard Tufts. I was a little surprised when I learned prior to watching The American Friend that Wenders had stapled some of the art forgery elements of Ripley Under Ground onto Ripley's Game – why would he do such a thing? – but his casting of his friend Nicholas Ray provides the explanation. Wenders reveals on the American Friend commentary track that Ray was dying – he finally passed away in 1979 – and that as a consequence Wenders wanted to get Ray into his film somehow. Unfortunately there was no part suitable for Ray, until Wenders thought of bringing Derwatt into the story.

Curiously, Cavani's Ripley's Game also introduces elements of art forgery: the film opens with Tom and Reeves – the latter played with sweary East End barrow-boy abandon by Ray Winstone, nothing like the Reeves of the books but immensely enjoyable nonetheless – selling forged paintings in Berlin, the funds from which Tom uses to buy a palatial villa in Italy – one which in truth is no closer to the more modest Belle Ombre of the books than Dennis Hopper's weird mansion in The American Friend. Jonathan lives in quite a nice gaff in the Ripley's Game film too, which on his wages I found slightly hard to believe, until I recalled how much some of the picture framers around Lewes charge.

Bruno Ganz's Jonathan, on the other hand, lives with his family adjacent to Hamburg's docks (like Cavani Wenders relocates the story from the novels' rural France) in a cramped apartment, one more befitting his evidently modest means. For me, Ganz gives the performance of either film. He's a more believable Jonathan than Dougray Scott for sure, but in his quiet and unassuming way he also outshines Dennis Hopper's chaotic turn in The American Friend and John Malkovich's dominating performance in Ripley's Game. I would say he's worth the price of admission alone, but The American Friend has much to recommend it besides, as does Ripley's Game, not least the aforementioned train sequence, which in both films is terrifically handled: thrilling, gruesome, darkly comic, and arresting in the moment, replicated in each film, where Jonathan tests the garrotte on himself. In general I don't think you could class either film as an especially faithful adaptation of the source material, but the gusto with which they both attack the same vital sequence speaks volumes to the passion of the filmmakers for their respective projects.

NB: German American Friend poster by Sickert filched from Mean Sheets.

Previous Patricia Highsmith posts in this run: 

Patricia Highsmith's Short Stories: Tales of Natural and Unnatural Catastrophes, Signed Inscribed Association First Edition

Patricia Highsmith's Short Stories: The Black House, Signed Inscribed Association First Edition with Handwritten Letter

Donald E. Westlake on Patricia Highsmith and Ripley Under Ground (the Film)

A Suspension of Mercy: Book Review

Ripley's Game: 1989 Uniform Edition

Those Who Walk Away: Book Review

Those Who Walk Away by Patricia Highsmith (Heinemann, 1967): Book Review

NB: Proffered as part of this Friday's Forgotten Books.

I made the point – not a terribly insightful one but I'm going to repeat it anyway – in my review of Patricia Highsmith's 1965 novel A Suspension of Mercy last week that the 1960s was a prolific period for Highsmith, at least in regard to novels: she published seven novels from 1960–1969, more than she managed in any other decade of her career. But the '60s were also, arguably, and again in regard to novels, her most experimental, most developmental era as a writer. The Highsmith decade began with a claustrophobic portrayal of a stalker told exclusively from the twisted point of view of that stalker (This Sweet Sickness, 1960), continued with a sympathetic portrayal of a peeping tom (The Cry of the Owl, 1962) and concluded with a sequence of three novels which, book by book, edged ever further away from the field for which she was best known: suspense fiction.

The first book in that trio was the aforementioned A Suspension of Mercy, with which Highsmith attempted to craft a suspense novel without a murder – unsuccessfully as it turned out (at least in the non-murder department; it's a decent book in its own right). The final book in the trio was The Tremor of Forgery (1969) – also the final Highsmith novel of the '60s – which dispensed with suspense – or crime fiction, or however you want to label it – altogether in favour of a character study – of a man, Howard Ingham, a writer like Highsmith, working on his next novel, living in a foreign land, cut off from his home and questioning his life, his sexuality, even the very nature of existence. It's a brilliant book, perhaps Highsmith's best non-Ripley novel, but in order to get to it Highsmith had to write the middle book of that '60s triumvirate:

Those Who Walk Away, published in 1967 by Doubleday in the US and Heinemann in the UK, which is the edition seen above (dust jacket photograph by Bruce Pinkard). On the surface Those Who Walk Away is another entry in the Highsmithic (as Book Glutton might put it) subgenre of two men who become dangerously fascinated by one another – see also her debut, Strangers on a Train (1950), The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955) and from earlier in the '60s The Two Faces of January (1964) (others of her novels also touch on this theme to varying degrees). But though much of the novel is devoted to the game of cat-and-mouse in and around Venice between Ray Garrett, a young American art dealer, and his boorish father-in-law, civil engineer-turned-painter Edward Coleman, throughout Highsmith persistently subverts and frustrates the expectations of the reader. There are long stretches where not very much happens – on the surface; the interior lives of Ray and Coleman are another matter (the story unfolds from their alternating perspectives) – punctuated by violent clashes, but even these confrontations are inconclusive.

The cause of the animosity between the two men is the suicide of Coleman's daughter – Ray's wife – which occurs just prior to the start of the novel; that aside there are no deaths in the book itself. That's quite a change from Highsmith's novels to this point (her 1952 pseudonymous romance The Price of Salt aside), but just as interesting is what this would mean for The Tremor of Forgery. Like Those Who Walk Away, The Tremor of Forgery is shaped to an extent by a suicide – Ingham's friend and business partner, who kills himself once Ingham has arrived in Tunisia. But Highsmith does very different things with the narratives of the two novels as a consequence of those deaths. In Those Who Walk Away she shapes a cat-and-mouse story similar in many ways to some of her earlier novels, while in The Tremor of Forgery she veers off in a much more philosophical and interior direction.

That said, and as I alluded to above, there are philosophical elements to Those Who Walk Away, many of them to do with identity. Here it's possible to see a connection between Those Who Walk Away and A Suspension of Mercy, in that the earlier novel features a character – Alicia, the wife of American writer Sydney Bartleby – who is believed to be dead and who actively works to maintain that illusion, something that both Ray and Coleman do at various points in Those Who Walk Away. (It's also possible to see a connection there between Those Who Walk Away and Highsmith's second Tom Ripley novel, 1970's Ripley Under Ground: Ray in effect haunts Coleman in places – as opposed to Coleman, who hunts Ray – in a similar fashion to the way in Ripley Under Ground Tom haunts the painter Bernard Tufts, who believes he has killed and buried Tom.) This sloughing off of one's identity is also a part of the makeup of The Tremor of Forgery, so in that sense Those Who Walk Away can be viewed as a bridge between A Suspension of Mercy and The Tremor of Forgery.

For Highsmith enthusiasts and aficionados it's a fascinating novel, although I'm not sure how fascinated a more general readership might be: a purported thriller without much in the way of thrills might not be the most enticing prospect, though there is of course always the unique and seductive – at least to my mind it's seductive – rhythm of Highsmith's prose style. But for those of us who can't get enough of Highsmith, it's an important book – not so much for what it is in and of itself, but what it represents in Highsmith's wider canon: the penultimate step on the road that would lead to The Tremor of Forgery.