WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS ahead for all 5 Ripley books by Patricia Highsmith.
Following the events of the new Netflix limited series Ripley, the enigmatic con artist went on to continue his sinister career as a professional scammer. The psychological thriller is based on the renowned 1955 novel The Talented Mr. Ripley by celebrated novelist Patricia Highsmith, the first of her 5-part “Ripley” book series that also includes Ripley Under Ground and Ripley’s Game. The Talented Mr. Ripley has been adapted several times for film and television, but none have been shot completely in monochrome until Steven Zallian’s Ripley. Zallian, the Academy Award-winning screenwriter of Schindler’s List, American Gangster, and The Irishman, wrote and directed the entire 8-episode miniseries.
Tom Ripley, who uses several different aliases and also acquires many places of residence throughout Ripley, is a master of disguise and deceit. He is drawn to murder once his true identity of being an elaborate con man faces the threat of being exposed. Tom has conned his way from a lowly life of scamming and thievery in New York City to becoming incredibly wealthy in Italy thanks to a supposed old friend, Dickie Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn). Ripley’s cast is led by an exceptionally chilling Andrew Scott (Fleabag, Black Mirror, All of Us Strangers) as the titular treacherous protagonist. By the end of Zallian’s Ripley, Tom has orchestrated a way to frame his murder of Dickie Greenleaf as a suicide by successfully convincing Dickie’s concerned girlfriend Marge Sherwood (Dakota Fanning) and a determined Inspector Ravini (Maurizio Lombardi).
Ripley has received rave reviews from critics upon its April 4, 2024 release exclusively on Netflix. Ripley brings to light the lengths that monsters like Tom will go to in the name of self-preservation, using chilling methodology and calculation to be seen as significant by means of material wealth and social access. Even after Tom escapes to England in the final moments of Ripley, he does not seem satisfied, only aware of what it feels like to wear Dickie’s clothes, flaunt Dickie’s ring, and stare at Dickie’s artwork while ultimately feeling nothing at all. Ripley is a chilling first entry of a magnificent book series by Highsmith, which continues with Tom living a new life in France six years after the events of The Talented Mr. Ripley.
Ripley Book 2, titled Ripley Under Ground, which was published in 1970, some fifteen years after The Talented Mr. Ripley. The book takes place in the summer of 1968, which is about the time that it would have been written by Highsmith. Tom has settled down in France in Ripley Under Ground and is married to a prominent French heiress named Héloïse Plisson, who has suspicions about how Tom acquired his money but never pries too deeply. In some ways, Héloïse is a combination of Dickie and Marge from The Talented Mr. Ripley, with Dickie’s casual attitude as well as Marge’s underlying suspicions towards Tom.
Tom’s big scam in Ripley Under Ground involves a massive art forgery operation. He became a silent partner of an organization known as Derwatt Ltd., which sells official works of the celebrated painter Philip Derwatt. Derwatt, however, is reported missing and has been presumed to be dead for years, although the general public is unaware of this. As a result, Tom enlists another painter named Bernard Tufts to impersonate Derwatt and paint original works on his behalf. Tom’s corrupt operation is flawless until an American collector named Thomas Murchison claims one of the paintings to be fraudulent.
Bernard Tufts, who feels incredibly guilty for his role in Tom’s art forgery scheme, eventually becomes Tom’s accomplice to the murder of the American art collector. After Tom kills Murchison, he enlists the help of Bernard to dispose of the body. This only worsens Barnard’s guilty conscience, who is contemplating coming clean about the whole ordeal to the police. While Bernard is a terrible accomplice to Tom in the murder of Murchison in Ripley Under Ground, it’s the first time in the book series where Tom enlists the help of another person after committing a murder.
Ripley Book 3 titled Ripley’s Game was published in 1974. It was adapted into a feature film that starred John Malkovich as Tom Ripley. Reeves Minot, who Malkovich plays in Netflix’s Ripley, appears in both Ripley Under Water and Ripley’s Game, but has a very suspicious request for Tom in the third Ripley book. Reeves Minot, who is a known high collar criminal in the United States, asks Tom to be a hitman at the start of Ripley’s Game. Tom, still living lavishly in France with his wife Héloïse, refuses and tries to find Minot a suitable replacement for that type of job.
After Tom finds the right man for the job, a poor man named Jonathan Trevanny who is dying from leukemia, he appears to be out of the operation altogether. Trevanny successfully completes one hit for Minot, which inspires Minot to get him to agree to another hit on a Mafia boss. The plan is tragic as the terminally ill Trevanny is meant to kill the mafioso and then take his own life immediately after, since there will be little chance of escape. Tom intervenes and kills the mafioso for Trevanny and makes him promise not to tell Minot that he assisted in the assassination.
Tom’s life is later saved by Trevanny once news gets out about his involvement on the assassination of the aforementioned mafioso. As mafia hitmen are just about to kill Tom, Trevanny acts as a human shield and saves Tom’s life. Overall, Ripley’s Game is much different from The Talented Mr. Ripley in that Tom has much more of a heart and a moral compass than he does in Highsmith’s first Ripley novel. Tom surprisingly also does not have a big new scam like he had in the previous two novels, which is an indication of the tonal shifts that are to come for his character later in the series.
Ripley Book number four, The Boy Who Followed Ripley, is the most unlike the rest of the Ripley novels, especially The Talented Mr. Ripley. In The Boy Who Followed Ripley, which was published in 1980, Tom continues to live comfortably at his French estate and has not participated much in his old life of crime. A mysterious boy comes to visit him at his house, claiming he’s from the United States and his name is Billy. Tom discovers that Billy is actually Frank Pierson, the son of an American business tycoon. Frank eventually confesses that he killed his father by pushing him off a cliff and came to Tom because he thought he would be able to help him base don his questionable reputation.
The Boy Who Followed Ripley is so much unlike the original The Talented Mr. Ripley novel in the way that Tom is acting like a responsible, but still shady, father figure for the first time in the series. It’s unclear why Highsmith decided to switch up the tone of her Ripley series so drastically with The Boy Who Followed Ripley, but it does align with the overall sense of growth that Tom was beginning to demonstrate in Ripley’s Game. It appears that after all in The Boy Who Followed Ripley, Tom does have a decent heart, which is stunning to consider after watching Netflix’s Ripley. At one point in the book, Tom even dresses in drag in order to rescue Frank after he’s been kidnapped.
Tom’s ghosts come back to haunt him in the final Ripley book, Ripley Under Water. The title is a notable reference to Tom’s fear of water that he demonstrated in The Talented Mr. Ripley. Ripley Under Water was published in 1991 and sees Tom living a completely normal, quaint life still in France where he tends to his garden daily. Tom is confronted by an American named David Pritchard who is convinced that Tom murdered the art collector Thomas Murchison, which took place in Ripley’s Game. David also starts to ask Tom questions about Dickie, bringing back Tom’s very first murder in the original book. Tom must find ways to deflect Pritchard’s accusations but does not resort to killing him, proving that Tom’s life of murder could in fact be over by the end of the book series.
Despite the effects of David Pritchard in Ripley Under Water, Tom Ripley gets away with it once again by the end of the fifth and final Ripley book. Shockingly, Pritchard does somehow discover Murchison’s body and goes so far as to leave his skeleton on Tom’s doorstep. Tom hides the body once again and leaves it in the pond outside the Pritchard family’s home, which leads to another tragedy and indirect murder on Tom’s behalf. Tom’s blood-soaked hands never come clean in any of Highsmith’s five Ripley books, cementing his status as one of the best literary con artists ever created. While there’s no current indication that Ripley season 2 will be made at Netflix, there is certainly plenty of source material to work with.