The Blunderer

by Patricia Highsmith

Book Overview

For two years, Walter Stackhouse has been a faithful and supportive husband to his wife, Clara. She is distant and neurotic, and Walter finds himself harboring gruesome fantasies about her demise. When Clara's dead body turns up at the bottom of a cliff in a manner uncannily resembling the recent death of a woman named Helen Kimmel who was murdered by her husband, Walter finds himself under intense scrutiny. He commits several blunders that claim...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393322440
• ISBN13: 9780393322446
• Release Date: November 2001
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.67 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.6" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Classic Highsmith

Hey, it's Highsmith. Enough said. Imagine the mundane becoming psychotic without giving a single warning.

pleasant surprise

I read The Blunderer after reading the better known and more highly regarded Strangers On A Train. To my surprise i found it was the better novel.Strangers is more cleverly plotted but it's less "HIGHSMITHIAN".I think it's safe to say that Highsmith went through some changes as a writer and a person between writing her first and third novels.In Strangers Highsmith still identifies with society to a striking degree.Bruno is the villan and he is a creep.Anne and her family are good and admirable.Guy doesn't want to do bad things and wouldn't but for Bruno.In THE BLUNDERER you know very quickly your in another world.The villan of the piece is not the murderer Kimmel.It's the police detective Corby.Corby is a genuinely vile character.That's interesting because Corby is trying to bring a couple of men he thinks are murderers to justice.The good people have disappeared.At first you think the protagonist Walter has tried and true friends and business associates.He has a charming new girlfriend.They all abandon him quite quickly once Corby starts to talk to them.This despite the fact that there is no compelling case against Walter.Some friends!Some girlfriend!In The Blunderer Highsmith has written a remarkably compelling tale of pettiness,cowardice and conformism.Walter does himself no favors by his blundering but it's the nearest and dearest who do him in by perversely empowering the moral cretin Corby.Alas Corby is also the novels weak link.What's a Philladelphia police detective doing in Allentown investigating a suspected suicide?Why is his department allowing him to run all over new york and new jersey to investigate crimes unconnected to philladelhia?Why does the newark police department cooperate with him?This is not plausible and winds up being annoying.Highsmith does have a certain weakness for all powerful detectives that gets the better of her.Had she resisted that here i think The Blunderer would have been one of her best novels.As it is it's quite good.

Tight, funny, fast, fresh, and resonant

This is a superbly crafted novel. It gets under your skin, and like a test for allergies, it makes you aware of sensitivities you never knew you had. I couldn't put it down, I often laughed out loud, and was haunted. She makes an improbable situation most probable. In another writer's hand this could've been dreadful. How did she do it? I am not sure. But that is the magic of Highsmith, and she spins her spell wonderfully in this masterpiece. It has an existential power, a nightmarish texture, and the bite of the best dark comedy.

a psychological thriller of the highest order

After reading 'Strangers on a Train', which I thought was utterly superb, I was generally disappointed in Highsmith's later works. While at worst enjoyable, these later works lacked the psychological tension of her first book (which was turned into a Hitchcock film). Fortunately, I discovered the (now) little-known 'The Blunderer', Highsmith's second mystery novel (after 'Strangers on a Train' and before 'The Talented Mr Ripley'). It is equal to the best she has ever done.Like 'Strangers on a Train', 'The Blunderer' is the study of two accused criminals and how they cope with each other while being hounded by an aggressive police detective. As guilt and suspicion build with each page the reader is really dropped into the deep end of endless anxiety and self-doubt. I found myself completely absorbed, especially during the last half of the novel. It is such a joy to read a novel that is crisp, economical and written in a seemingly effortless style.Bottom line: 'The Blunderer' is a must read. Hopefully it will be reprinted so that Highsmith junkies (like me) can readily find it.

Lies, guilt, and amazing suspense

Currently out of print, this early thriller by Patricia Highsmith bears many of her trademarks: page-turning suspense, unbelievably cruel and sordid characters, the "doppelganger" motif (as in "Strangers on a Train"), the famous "transference of guilt" that fascinated Hitchcock, and an overpowering sense of hopelessness (at times I felt like I was reading an American version of Camus's "The Stranger"). Added here is a theme of lying that twists and turns its way through the plot until "the tangled web" is so thick that there is simply no way out.The story concerns two unhappy marriages -- one that ends in murder, and another that seems headed in the same direction. Like so many other Highsmith books, it features a pair of not-too-admirable protagonists, one who is truly guilty and another who only seems to be -- or is he really? How much do intention and motivation count toward making a man guilty of murder? This is one of Highsmith's favorite themes, and it's played out here in its most radical and shattering incarnation.In the end, I think you'll find the book is about a man who is not so much a blunderer as he is virtually driven to possible madness and genuine guilt by the constant doubt and suspicion of everyone he knows -- including himself.In typical Highsmith fashion, this is a book nearly impossible to put down, yet dizzying in its psychological implications. I've said before that reading Highsmith is like falling down a well -- it's dark and terrifying, and there's no way to stop. That's about what this book feels like. Well worth finding, esp. for the die-hard Highsmith fan (like me).