The Cry of the Owl

one of her finest novels' Guardian"If everybody in the world didn't keep watching to see what everybody else did, we'd all go berserk."Jenny believes that sighting an owl is a portent of death.

Patricia Highsmith was born in Fort Worth, Texas in 1921. Her parents moved to New York when she was six, and she attended the Julia Richmond High School and Barnard College. In her senior year she edited the college magazine, having decided to become a writer at the age of sixteen. Her first novel, Strangers on a Train, was made into a famous film by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951. The Talented Mr Ripley, published in 1955, was awarded the Edgar Allen Poe Scroll by the Mystery Writers of America. Patricia Highsmith died in Locarno, Switzerland in 1995. Her last novel Small g: A Summer Idyll was published posthumously just over a month later.