Found in the Street - by Patricia Highsmith (Paperback)

About the Book

Set in Greenwich Village, Found in the Street is a powerful novel of sexual obsession and the complexity of desire. Elsie Taylor drifts into New York City looking for good times and opportunities. Ralph Linderman, a failed inventor who walks the streets at dawn with a dog named God, sees her as oblivious to, and endangered by, the corruption he sees everywhere around him.

Book Synopsis

"Fabulous, in all senses of that word . . . combining the best features of the suspense genre with the best of existential fiction--a thrilled reflection."--Paul Theroux

Elsie Tyler turns heads wherever she goes. After leaving her hometown upstate for Greenwich Village, the charming young waitress soon finds herself surrounded by admirers, including Jack and Natalia Sutherland, a married couple who invite Elsie into their bohemian inner circle and help her launch a career as a model. Meanwhile, Ralph Linderman, a middle-aged security guard with a dog named God, is nursing his own obsession with Elsie. He sets out to protect her from the "bad company" she attracts, but his uninvited affections are overbearing, possibly even pathological. When Ralph finds Jack's wallet on a morning stroll through the Village, and returns it, he is entirely unprepared for the complex maze of sexual obsession and disturbing psychological intrigue he is about to be drawn into.

Originally published in 1986, Found in the Street is classic Highsmith--an engrossing, unsettling thriller that explores the bleakest alleyways of human desire, and a kaleidoscopic portrait of 1980s New York City. Patricia Highsmith, author of Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley, has been called "one of the finest crime novelists" by the New York Times and is now considered one of the most original voices in twentieth-century American fiction.

Review Quotes

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 toad--success is nearly always fatal. . . . Combining the best features of the suspense genre with the best of existential fiction--a reflection--the stories are fabulous, in all the senses of that word."--Paul Theroux

"She writes so fearlessly . . . about human relationships and the human heart. I always have this terrible sense of foreboding . . . you never feel safe."--Cate Blanchett

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

"These days, just about all the exciting work in the murder-for-entertainment business descends not from Arthur Conan Doyle or Hammett but from Highsmith."--Atlantic

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

About the Author

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.