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Patricia Highsmith

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A Game for the Living Kindle Edition

by Patricia Highsmith (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

3.7 107 ratings

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An “elegant and psychologically sophisticated” novel about two men with a murdered women between them (Cleveland Plain Dealer).

Ramón, a devout Catholic, fixes furniture in Mexico City, not far from where he was born into poverty. Theodore, a rich German expatriate and painter, believes in nothing at all. You’d think the two had nothing in common. Except, of course, that both had slept with Lelia. The two form an unlikely friendship, until Lelia is found brutally murdered. Both are suspects—and each suspects the other.

Twisting in a limbo of tension and doubt, Ramón and Theodore seize on a third man, a thief seen at Lelia’s apartment, and their hunt takes them from Mexico City to sun-drenched Acapulco, and to a small colonial mountain town. An atmospheric, psychologically complex novel, A Game for the Living is Highsmith at her best.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Praise for A Game for the Living

Patricia Highsmith is often described as a mystery or crime writer, which is a bit like calling Picasso a draftsman. The statement contains a measure of truth, but what it leaves out is almost everything. . . . [A Game for the Living is] an elegant and psychologically sophisticated morality play. . . . All of it reveals Highsmith to be in fine form.”Cleveland Plain Dealer

Classic.”USA Today

There’s no thriller writer’s gamesmanship in her novels, none of the reassuring trickery of professional pulp; Highsmith’s style is as blunt and straightforward as a strip-search.”New Yorker

A coolly analytic study of friendship, neurosis, and grief.”Mystery News

Praise for Patricia Highsmith

"[Highsmith's] characters are irrational, and they leap to life in their very lack of reason. . . . Highsmith is the poet of apprehension rather than fear."Graham Greene

"For some obscure reason, one of our greatest modernist writers, Patricia Highsmith, has been thought of in her own land as a writer of thrillers. She is both. She is certainly one of the most interesting writers of this dismal century."Gore Vidal

"Miss Highsmith's genius is in presenting fantasy's paradox: successes are not what they seem. . . . Where in the traditional fairy tale the heroine turns the toad into a prince, in Miss Highsmith's fables the prince becomes a toadsuccess is nearly always fatal. . . . Combining the best features of the suspense genre with the best of existential fictiona reflectionthe stories are fabulous, in all the senses of that word."Paul Theroux

"Patricia Highsmith's novels are peerlessly disturbingbad dreams that keep us restless and thrashing for the rest of the night."Terrence Rafferty, New Yorker

"Highsmith, who can change reality to nightmare with one well-turned phrase, is a legendary crime writer."Cleveland Plain Dealer

From the Back Cover

Ramn mends furniture. Theodore paints. A devout Catholic, Ramn lives in Mexico City, not far from where he was born into poverty. Theodore, a rich German transplanted to a country where money buys some comfort but no peace, believes in nothing at all. You'd think the two had nothing in common. Except, of course, that both had slept with Lelia. The two were good friends, so neither minded sharing her affections. They did mind, however, when Lelia was found raped, murdered, and horribly mutilated. The two friends, suspects both, twist in a limbo of tension and doubt, each seeking his own form of solace and truth.

"Highsmith in fine form, and if there are terrors in store for readers of A Game for the Living, there are also the rich pleasures of getting to know two men whose affection for each other runs deep enough to survive the possibility that one is a killer."-Janice Harayda, The Cleveland Plain Dealer

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00ET7PJC4
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Grove Press; First Trade Paper edition (November 11, 2014)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ November 11, 2014
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 3842 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 299 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #618,641 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #6,535 in Murder
- #6,564 in Psychological Thrillers (Kindle Store)
- #13,260 in Psychological Thrillers (Books)

Customer Reviews:
3.7 107 ratings

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Patricia Highsmith

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Patricia Highsmith (1921-1995) was the author of more than twenty novels, including Strangers on a Train, The Price of Salt and The Talented Mr. Ripley, as well as numerous short stories.

Customer reviews

3.7 out of 5

107 global ratings

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RHONDA

Ripley would have been proud

Reviewed in the United States on March 13, 2022

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Ms Highsmith knows human nature as well as any modern writer.I enjoy her unsentimental way of portraying her characters while still giving her readers the opportunity to hope that Ramon will emerge from the circumstan
ces surrounding the death of his lover.

One person found this helpful

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Duane Denison

Not bad, not great

Reviewed in the United States on May 12, 2020

Not the best Highsmith novel but not the worst either...A Game for the Living is not quite as tension filled as I had hoped.

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D. Peters

An Odd Book from an Odd writer

Reviewed in the United States on August 15, 2020

Verified Purchase

I have read many Patricia Highsmith novels but this one stands out for it's strangeness. It's densly written and maddingly detailed. Still, I was interested in the story and stuck with it. I don't think it's her best work by far but I don't think anyone else could have written it. It suffers from something many mysteries suffer from: as main characters are eliminated from blame, suddenly only secondary characters are left. A sharp reader can figure it where to point the finger.

4 people found this helpful

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K

suspenseful

Reviewed in the United States on November 13, 2016

Verified Purchase

Maybe not Highsmith's best known--but very enjoyable psychological suspense novel. Full of doubt, suspicion and paranoia. what more can you ask for?

2 people found this helpful

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Graham V. Smith

they are all good

Reviewed in the United States on August 30, 2023

the prose is always bad but every one is good. this is one of the best for me. ph rulz

Helpful

Todd Croak-Falen

For Diehard Fans Only

Reviewed in the United States on December 20, 2012

I would only recommend this book to diehard Patricia Highsmith fans. (And I do consider myself one.) But even then, this really isn't her best work. While it has the distinction of taking place in Mexico, its plot is strange and meandering. It contains probably a short story's worth of events, with a lot of extraneous filler. Aside from a few interesting ruminations on the difference between Catholics and Atheists, the story would have benefited from a faster, more concise pace.

This is also the first of Highsmith's books I have read where there is an actual mystery involved. (In most of her books, we know who committed the crime and are often inside his or her head.) But in "A Game for the Living," there is a lack of urgency to discover Lelia's killer, even for the audience. We never get to meet Lelia -- she's dead from the very first chapter -- so it's hard to be as emotionally involved as her two lovers are.

Despite this, "A Game for the Living" does contain many other Highsmith trademarks: an unusual love triangle, a nearly-emotionless main character, and an ending that is (supposed to be) shocking and brutal. I don't feel like she really nailed the ending this time, although the very last line of the novel puts the whole thing in perspective.

5 people found this helpful

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RCM

Winning and Losing

Reviewed in the United States on January 21, 2012

Patricia Highsmith was a novelist of unique skill - an author capable of creating questionable, oft times immoral characters that readers still root for. In "A Game for the Living" Highsmith explores the psychology of those caught up in a grisly murder case. It is not her best work by far but it shows the intelligence and depth that has trademarked all of this enigmatic author's works.

Theodore, a transplant from Germany, returns home from a painting trip only to discover that Leila, his lover, has been brutally raped and murdered. His thoughts immediately turn to Ramon, his friend and Leila's fellow lover, since he has a quick temper and has threatened to harm her in the past. Yet Ramon is innocent even when he confesses to her murder (due to his deep rooted Catholicism and his need for atonement). Theodore wants to find her killer, especially when he starts receiving crank calls with no one on the other end and when his house is broken into late one night. Theodore knows that there must be a connection with these events and Leila's murder. Working with the local police captain, Theodore tracks down as many clues and suspects as he can to solve the case.

Oftentimes it seems as if Highsmith is not going to fulfill the story's goal - that the murderer will remain uncaught and that the bizarre friendship between Ramon and Theodore will continue to spin puzzlingly on. And perhaps that would have been better than the rushed ending the author gave this novel, with its fortuitous events and unseen confession. Readers will play the same game that Highsmith's characters do as they try to solve the mystery of Leila's murder. "A Game for the Living" is an intriguing thriller that picks up pace near the end but lacks much of the pizzaz and elan of her other works.

4 people found this helpful

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doug hall

the only work of highsmiths that is very poor

Reviewed in the United States on December 27, 2014

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Bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad horrible sad dumb loss waste