Tom Ripley, the devilish and charming hero of Patricia Highsmith's Pentology, reveals here an unexpected side of his personality. The opportunity arises when he meets sixteen-year-old Frank Pierson, the son of an American millionaire who has run away from home, and he is consumed by an unfortunate teenage love and, above all, a tremendous wave of guilt, as he confesses to having murdered his disabled father.

With a generosity and warmth we did not know, Ripley takes it upon himself to help him. For the sake of the boy, Tom Ripley leaves his magnificent country estate in France and gets involved with the world of the night and the gangs of Berlin during the time of the Wall in a kidnapping case that requires unusual methods - and great insight - to solve. And then the icy amoralist Ripley transforms into a generous and compassionate protector. Highsmith offers a portrait of her hero that is both perfectly fitting and unpredictable at the same time.

With this psychologically complex and persistently twisted masterpiece, Highsmith distorts all notions of friendship, gender, and morality as she explores the relationship between a young man with a guilty conscience and an older man without a conscience at all.