[4] Born in Fort Worth, Texas, and mostly raised in her infancy by her maternal grandmother, Highsmith was taken to New York City at the age of six to live with her mother and stepfather.

Her 1955 novel The Talented Mr. Ripley was well received in the United States and Europe, cementing her reputation as a major exponent of psychological thrillers.

[9]: 565  Patricia excelled at school and read widely, including works by Jack London, Louisa May Alcott, Robert Louis Stevenson, Bram Stoker, and John Ruskin.

[9]: 92 In the summer of 1933, Highsmith attended a girls' camp and the letters she wrote home were published as a story two years later in Woman's World magazine.

[10]: 63–73, 90–92 After graduating in 1942, Highsmith, despite endorsements from "highly placed professionals," applied without success for a job at publications such as Harper's Bazaar, Vogue, Mademoiselle, Good Housekeeping, Time, Fortune, and The New Yorker.

The following year she commenced writing Strangers on a Train, and her new agent submitted an early draft to a publisher's reader who recommended major revisions.

The novel made Highsmith a respected figure in the New York lesbian community, but as she did not publicly acknowledge authorship, it did not further her literary reputation.

[10]: 206 She also completed two further novels, Deep Water (published in 1957) and A Game for the Living (1958), and a children's book, Miranda the Panda is on the Veranda (1958), that she co-authored with Doris Sanders.

Her novels of this period include The Tremor of Forgery (1969), which Graham Greene considered her finest work, and Ripley Under Ground (1970) which gained generally positive reviews.

[5]: 216–218 In 1981, Highsmith moved into her Swiss home and began writing a new novel, People who Knock on the Door (1983), about the influence of Christian fundamentalism in America.

[5]: 220–223  Her biographer Joan Schenkar states that by this time Highsmith had been living in Europe so long she "began to make errors of American fact and understanding in her novels."

[9]: 590 [14][15][16] She left her estate, worth an estimated $3 million, and the promise of any future royalties, to the Yaddo colony, where she spent two months in 1948 writing the draft of Strangers on a Train.

In January 1992 she had a procedure to widen her left femoral artery, and in September the following year she had surgery to remove a non-cancerous tumor in her lower intestine.

[10]: 379, 411–414, 446, 454–455 To all the devils, lusts, passions, greeds, envies, loves, hates, strange desires, enemies ghostly and real, the army of memories, with which I do battle—may they never give me peace.

"[10]: 75  British journalist Francis Wyndham, who met her in 1963, said, "I liked her immediately...I could tell that she was shy and reticent, a woman with deep feelings, someone who was affectionate but also difficult.

"[25] Although she preferred her personal life to remain private, she took no steps to avoid the posthumous availability of her diaries and notebooks in which she recorded the motivations of her behavior.

"[10]: 1–2, 151–152 While in Munich In September 1951, Highsmith met the German sociologist Ellen Hill who, according to Schenkar, "had the longest, strongest influence on Pat's life (after mother Mary).".

[9]: 543  She described herself as a liberal or Social Democrat but admired Margaret Thatcher because of her policy of tax cuts and wrote that she would not sacrifice any of her money to help the poor.

This book has nothing to do with their problem.Highsmith donated money to the Jewish Committee on the Middle East, an organization that represented American Jews who supported Palestinian self-determination.

[10]: 330–332 While several of her friends attested to her kindness to animals, some visitors to Highsmith's homes in France and Switzerland said that she mistreated her cats, including swinging one around in a towel to make it dizzy for the amusement of her guests.

"[10]: 219 The novel introduces major themes in Highsmith's work including the complementary nature of good and evil, an implied homoerotic attraction between male antagonists, and shifting identities.

[31] In what BBC 2's The Late Show presenter Sarah Dunant described as a "literary coming out" after 38 years of disaffirmation,[10]: 441–442  Highsmith finally acknowledged authorship of the novel publicly when she agreed, in 1990, to its republication by Bloomsbury under the title Carol.

Prior to this book, homosexuals male and female in American novels had had to pay for their deviation by cutting their wrists, drowning themselves in a swimming pool, or by switching to heterosexuality (so it was stated), or by collapsing – alone and miserable and shunned – into a depression equal to hell.

[33] The Price of Salt is the only Highsmith novel in which no violent crime takes place[7] and, according to Harrison, the only one where sexual relations are portrayed openly and positively.

"[10]: 191  She went on to write four sequels (in the series sometimes called the "Ripliad"[5]: 238 ) and by 1989, according to Bradford, "Ripley had become for her the equivalent of Conan Doyle's Holmes, even Shakespeare's Hamlet, the figure who defined her as a writer.

"[5]: 95  Critic Anthony Hilfer sees Ripley as an exemplar of the "protean or perpetually self-inventing man" who can transform himself into anyone by mimicking their external traits.

"[5]: 118 Tom Ripley has been variously described by commentators as "repellent and fascinating,"[5]: 118  "a cold blooded killer with a taste for the finer things in life," and "an amoral but charming psychopath.

[30]: 1  Bradford considers Strangers on a Train, The Price of Salt and The Talented Mr. Ripley her most accomplished novels and states, "Highsmith has done more than anyone to erode the boundaries between crime writing as a recreational sub-genre and literature as high art.

Bradford writes, "Issues such as guilt, hatred, self-loathing and unfulfilled longing which Highsmith endlessly contemplated without resolution became the cocktail for her fictional narratives and characters.

"[34]: 20 Critic David Cochran sees Highsmith's work as a critique of suburban America: "According to the dominant vision, a family, house in the suburbs and successful job equalled mental health and happiness, whereas the absence of these things led to sickness.