RIPLEY UNDER GROUND

Ripley is one of Patricia Highsmith's casually unconscionable miscreants; he lives in luxury in the south of France off a charming young wife and off the proceeds (via England) of a fraudulent art enterprise consisting of the canvases of a dead painter (forged). Now an American collector questions one of his acquisitions and Ripley kills him and goes on to improvise with outrageous flair. Sometimes you suspect that Miss Highsmith as well as Ripley is getting away with murder—but they both do it so elegantly.