"No," Walter said, and in the next second wanted to change his answer. His mind see-sawed horribly between telling the whole story now, and concealing as much about Kimmel as he could. But what if Kimmel told it all tomorrow. Walter felt he was the victim of some complicated game, a slow gathering of nets that had suddenly dropped on him and drawn tight.
--Patricia Highsmith, The Blunderer (Coward McCann, 1954)
The Blunderer starts and ends with murder and becomes a psychological study of class and obsession, with a gay subtext, themes common to many of Highsmith's novels in this, her third book. Walter Stackhouse is a well-off suburban lawyer and Melchior Kimmel is an intelligent immigrant struggling with his bookstore in Newark, N.J. What they have in common includes a dislike of their wives, as Kimmel kills his wife while Stackhouse is accused of doing the same in a similar modus operandi. Between them is cop Lawrence Corby who manipulates them against each other in his attempt to find out if either or both are guilty. Details of Stackhouse's suburban life is explored, as all his friends are questioned by Corby and begin to believe in his guilt. Stackhouse does not help himself by lying to his new girlfriend, a relationship he feels forced into by his wife's suspicion.
Highsmith's novel is a corrosive view of America in the fifties, a country of bored suburbanites, unhappy marriages, people who repress their feelings and violent police who will stop at nothing to coerce a confession.
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