3 out of 5

The initial Ripley book, to me suffered from a bit too much origin story feel, not really getting into the grit of the character.  While the whole thing could be said to be a character study of a highly functioning deranged sociopath, that Highsmith took her time to make Ripley human and likeable and logical (within his brain) made sections of the book just drag.  Calamity doesn’t have to to occur on every page, but the sections that worked best were those where high drama would incite such evil focus from the lead, and his sidling into story-telling mode was always jaw-droppingly smooth.  But the juxtaposition of fiction and reality was paved over to a snooze, and I suppose I have very fond memories of American Psycho, where this concept is blown out to ridiculous proportions (and I’ll fully admit that Ellis isn’t as technically accomplished or as intelligent in writing as Highsmith).

Ripley book 2 is an improvement over 1 because we don’t have to relearn Ripley’s spiel.  Whether or not Ms. H-smith intended this to be a series, she got her explorations of how to breed a murderer out of the way with ‘Talented,’ and so here can focus more on the man now fully comfortable with his lifestyle and crimes.  He’s married, it’s a few years on, and he has a couple of minor criminal enterprises happening on the side – a small goods transportation operation, a painting forgery business – to keep him occupied.  The odd Ripley quirks are there, such as his fascination with men over women and de-sexifying of the whole business, even though he performs the duty with wife competently enough (even appreciating the comfort of her touch).  He still gets a little giddy thrill whenever danger is in the air, he still gets ridiculously calm when his life is threatened, and he still has seeming “whiteouts” when he goes into rage mode.  These seeds were planted in ‘Talented’ at the cost of much plotting and patience, and Highsmith is able to reintroduce all of it here, even evolving it, without it feeling cheap or like a rehash of book one, and somehow managing to keep the events of ‘Talented’ mostly shrouded (via Tom’s ability to gloss over the past) in case any readers might’ve skipped that book.  This comfort with her character makes ‘Under Ground’ interesting the whole way through, none of the tourist detours to distract us, the con and killing mostly on the go from the moment they begin (which is really a few pages in).  Alas, there’s still a lack of danger to the to-do, which is, in part, due to Ripley’s telling, but there are moments that up the ante so effectively that you can’t help but wonder if that sensibility couldn’t be sprinkled about moreso through the book.

The core of this is still noir, though, just told through a somewhat romanticized lens.  We have our plot that just goes from bad to worse, when Tom decides to impersonate a painter named Derwatt in order to keep the forgery business he’s tied to still operating, and a skeptical American collector – Tom Murchison – decides to challenge Tom / Derwatt on the legitimacy of some of the paintings.  Ripley could, of course, leave this issue up to other people, but he knows how to handle it correctly and so he gets more and more involved, until he’s making decisions from which there’s no turning back.  Highsmith’s decision to involve more people in the con (Ripley, to a greater or lesser extent, explains his transgressions to his wife or forgery partners with his characteristic charm and ‘this is logical’ sensibility) is a good and bad thing – good in that it increases our exposure to Tom’s manipulations and give the book room to juggle characters versus the much more isolated feel of ‘Talented,’ but bad as it adds to the distillation of danger.  The flipside of this is that the honesty of the narrative (he isn’t an untrustworthy narrator, just an imbalanced one) provides all that psychological goodness – Tom actually asks himself on occasion if he knew he was going to commit certain actions before he did, shruggingly or laughingly accepting that this might be the case – and those frightening moments where he’s concocting branching, branching stories out of thin air.  It’s all quite fascinating from a distance, even though it still feels more like casual reading than compelling.

‘Under Ground’ is much more solid than book 1 but it definitely required the footing of an origin story to work.  The story is interesting, and flows from page to page.  Ripley is so damn cool about it all, though, that it begins to rub off on the reader.  But you can’t help but wonder where this character goes from here, so it accomplishes the goal of getting me hooked for another.