Campaign for the American Reader: Five of the most enduring imposters in crime fiction & espionage

Paul Vidich’s fourth novel, The Mercenary, is now out from Pegasus Books. His debut novel, An Honorable Man, was selected by Publishers Weekly as a Top 10 Mystery and Thriller in 2016. It was followed the next year by The Good Assassin. His third novel, The Coldest Warrior, was widely praised in England and America, earning strong reviews from The Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times.

[Q&A with Paul Vidich]

At CrimeReads, Vidich tagged five "classic works whose memorable imposters still entertain and appall us," including:

The Talented Mr. Ripley, Patricia Highsmith (1955)

Tom Ripley is the quintessential sympathetic scoundrel. To avoid police detectives in New York, Ripley eagerly accepts a wealthy businessman’s invitation to visit Italy to check in on his son, Dickie Greenleaf. The two young men are opposites and from the start don’t get along. Ripley is clever and intelligent, yet lacks a college degree, and he feels superior to most of the people around him. Dickie is educated, wealthy, and self-absorbed, having gone to Italy to paint, but he has negligible talent. During an outing on San Remo bay, Ripley impulsively strikes Dickie with an oar, killing him. The novel’s course suddenly shifts.

Ripley vaguely regrets the murder, suffers bouts of paranoia and some bad dreams, but he is able to convince himself that it was not his fault. He re-imagines the incident, draws alternate conclusions, and makes up different versions of what happened. And slowly, he begins to inhabit Dickie’s life, signing Dickie’s name on checks, selling Dickie’s boat, and soon Ripley begins to enjoy being Dickie. He takes on Dickie’s mannerisms, his tastes, and soon he is no longer impersonating Dickie—he is Dickie. He leaves behind his own shabby existence and steps into the life of the man he killed.