»Ripley Under Ground

I am continuing a rapid reading of Patricia Highsmith's terrifying and beautiful Ripley books, about a disturbingly amoral protagonist. "Ripley Under Ground" picks up the narrative some years after "The Talented Mr Ripley" left off, and Tom Ripley has married a pretty French woman, settled in the country outside of Paris, and runs a clever forgery scheme based in London.
Although Ripley's actions are often selfish, motivated through greed or through a plain desire for self-advancement, he is compelling and even likeable (as his first victims discovered): he has social graces and faults, can be enchanting in company and awkward, and does not appear outwardly psychopathic. Different from the cultivated yet bizarre personality of Hannibal Lecter, Ripley is in no way a social misfit, and this makes his crimes, especially the murders, all the more mystifying.
Highsmith's narrative has beautifully-constructed sentences, a broad and comfortable vocabulary -- she mixes French, German, and Italian conversation in a pleasant and non-pretentious way, to add flavour to the dialogues.