Patricia Highsmith's criminal neglect

Film adaptations mean she's not unknown, but her tense and unsettling thrillers deserve a much wider readership

It looks as though we're about to see a resurgence of interest in American crime writer Patricia Highsmith and frankly, it's about time. This month brings the re-release of her book The Two Faces of January, ahead of a movie adaptation starring Kirsten Dunst and Viggo Mortensen, which comes out in May. In March, Virago released Highsmith's novels as ebooks for the first time and in September they'll publish the three books she wrote in England (The Glass Cell, A Suspension of Mercy and Those Who Walk Away) in paperback with new introductions by Joan Schenkar, author of the biography The Talented Miss Highsmith. Perhaps most enticing of all, Highsmith's 1950s lesbian romance Carol is currently being made into a film by Todd "Far From Heaven" Haynes, starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara. Yet even a movie with this kind of cachet might not persuade people to revisit the source material.