Strangers on a Train Audiobook By Patricia Highsmith cover art

Strangers on a Train

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Strangers on a Train

By: Patricia Highsmith
Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
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In Patricia Highsmith's debut novel, we encounter Guy Haines and Charles Anthony Bruno, passengers on the same train. But while Guy is a successful architect in the midst of a divorce, Bruno turns out to be a sadistic psychopath who manipulates Guy into swapping murders with him. As Bruno carries out his twisted plan, Guy is trapped in Highsmith's perilous world - where, under the right circumstances, anybody is capable of murder.

The inspiration for Alfred Hitchcock's classic 1951 film, Strangers on a Train launched Highsmith on a prolific career of noir fiction and proved her mastery of depicting the unsettling forces that tremble beneath the surface of everyday contemporary life.

©2015 Patricia Highsmith (P)2015 Blackstone Audio, Inc. Crime Crime Fiction Crime Thrillers Fiction Mystery Noir Psychological Suspense Thriller Thriller & Suspense Scary

Featured Article: These Noir Listens Will Take You to the Dark Side of Fiction


What do you love most in your mystery listens? Is it dark, moody settings and gritty storylines? Is it morally ambiguous main characters with complex inner lives? If so, noir is your kind of fiction. As a literary genre, noir can be difficult to nail down because so much of it is based on a general feeling of darkness and danger. Noir fiction was inspired by film noir, and film noir traces its roots to hard-boiled detective novels. Check out the world of noir fiction audiobooks.

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Psychological Thriller • Complex Characters • Intriguing Premise • Dark Exploration • Masterful Writing
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I really enjoyed the story, and very much enjoy Pinchot's performance...EXCEPT FOR THE UNPLACEABLE ACCENTS. Around Chapter 10, I finally sped it up to 1.35 and that was so much better. The first half of the story only feels like it's dragging, because once the real conflict begins, the psychological horror is non-stop.

Great story, weird accents

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I love the Hitchcock movie and often rewatch it. But the book is richer and darker and is worth a listen. The suspense is still there, especially if you think you know what happens. One disappointment: Bruno never says “criss-cross”!

Better than the movie

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It was too dark for me! It made me depressed. The narration was good and suspenseful.

Too Dark

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it's not poorly written or anything, it just falls into that "Murphy's Law" category of books where things just endlessly get worse to the point you just lose interest and want to throttle the main character for stupid decisions and things they say. The performance is good, but every character has a southern draw to it despite mostly taking place in New England. To put it simply, if you like to connect with a character and be invested in them, avoid this book.

an uncomfortable book that's just not enjoyable

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Fantastic Patricia Highsmith and a great reading by Mr. Pinchot. Lost nothing by goosing speed 25%!

Amazing

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The protagonist is snared into the twisted double-murder plan of a man he meets on a train. From this chance meeting we see our character go to incredible and dark lengths to rid himself of him.

Decent into madness.

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I’m a Hitchcock fan from way back. And “Strangers” is one of my favorite films. Its sunny charm and crackling humor and steaming, churning pace make it fun and thrilling from engine to caboose.

After reading a Hitch bio, I decided to visit some of his source material and started here. The vast difference in narrative and tone are striking. Absent are the charm and humor. In their place is a brooding, dark, psychological study that at once mirrors society at large and struggles to make sense of a post-war world. Guy and Bruno’s roles are familiar, sure. But their motivations run much, much deeper.

Patricia Highsmith has a brilliant voice that situates the reader squarely in the killing mind. I wasn’t prepared for how emotional this book is, or how introspective and even frustrating. I’m a full-fledged Highsmith fan now!

I must add how very much I enjoyed Bronson Pinchot’s performance. He brought the book alive carefully, stealthily, like a lone whistle in the distance signaling the raging locomotive on its way.

Forget what you know from Hitch’s movie, this is something wholly other.

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This is not for the superficial reader. But if one enjoys analysis of human emotion, behavior.. Society and individual right vs wrong, and all the grey areas in between. This is a novel that takes one deep into that grey area. Not with boring rhetoric, but full of rich discovery of individuals conscious. Differentiating between the informed conscious and the fully "formed" and heavy developed.

Very heavy but amazing

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Narration was excellent, characters brilliantly described. Story intense and well laid out. So much better than the movie by Hitchcock. Elaborate depth of characters and their personalities. Highly recommend.

Psychological thriller at its best!

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Good and evil, two sides of the same coin? This is a story that depicts the human struggle to integrate direct ones good and evil sides. Torn between his feelings ( rage, wish to kill his ex wife, and his IDEA (Plato) /ideals/Christian middle class "training" Guy , a self aware, intelligent, talented, gifted , but ambivalent "architect"/ builder of beautiful structures so graceful and attuned they confer grace, meets his opposite, while in transit - through the wasteland on his way to Texas. to divorce himself from the past so he can start a "new life' with Anne who is apparently 'pure' focused,productive and in control of her life. Guy arrogantly assumes he can interact with Charles Bruno without becoming magnetized or absorbed into him, but he is no match for the Devil. His sensibily is constructed and in process. His over-riding insistence in doing what is right requires him to self-condemn. When they meet on the train his mind is in turmoil and chaotic. He is therefore open and vulnerable to the fatal magnetism of Bruno. Guy is no match for the Devil. He is neither strong enough to integrate and evolve the dissolution and darkness nor stable enough in his constructed self, his architected self to differentiate himself entirely from the darkness, Bruno. The train rolls ceaselessly through a hellish wasteland, a featureless,beige undefined zone, where anything can happen, where one is suspended between here and there, past and future, a zone where one can start with one destination and find that trajectory fatally compelled in a completely other direction. Bronson Pinchot was brilliant as narrator and the perfect choice for this story

Keyword: cathect

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