Ever feel like murdering somebody?

"Ever feel like murdering somebody?" Like many people I'm sure I've felt like it, but only in the heat of the moment, never in reality. But Charles Bruno in Patricia Highsmith's first novel, Strangers on a Train, isn't like most people. He's an alcoholic, desperately bored, rich man whose father keeps him short of money.

Whilst traveling by train to Santa Fe to spend time with his mother, Bruno meets Guy, an ambitious architect held back by his wife Miriam who refuses him a divorce. The two men get drunk and talk about their troubles, and Bruno comes up with a plan to murder Miriam in return for Guy murdering his father. In spite of his inebriation, Guy firmly rejects the idea.

It was the train setting that attracted me to the book, although after the first couple of chapters, the action shifts to various locations in the USA, places where the characters live or visit for holidays. The plot isn't fast paced, rather the narrative takes time to examine what makes Bruno and Guy tick, their feelings and how they relate to each other. It's a complicated relationship. Bruno "did not know how to love, and that was all he needed", he loves Guy and wants to be loved back. Guy is ambitious and desires fame. He feels "hatred and disgust" for Bruno, yet admits that "each was what the other had not chosen to be, the cast-off self, what he thought he hated but perhaps in reality loved".

Of the secondary characters, I enjoyed Bruno's mother, a rich wife who takes no trouble to try to solve her own, let alone her son's problems. Bruno "had always been given everything", and she could not understand why he had become an alcoholic, how it had begun. Thinking about it, "she got up, needing a drink herself".

There were a couple of things that niggled me, but I can't say what without giving away spoilers. Overall, I really enjoyed the book. Bruno was a genuinely creepy character and I sympathised with Guy's wish to break all contact with him. He learned the hard way to "beware the desperate boredom of the wealthy".