Editing Patricia Highsmith (section)

=== ''Strangers on a Train'' ===
Schenkar<ref name="Schenkar2009" />{{Rp|page=557}}and Bradford<ref name="Bradford2021" />{{Rp|page=xii}} consider Highsmith's first novel, ''Strangers on a Train'', to be one of her finest works. Bradford writes that the book "made her name as a writer capable of evoking the horrific and the grotesque."<ref name="Bradford2021" />{{Rp|page=46}} Her agent, Patricia Schartle, said that the basic idea of two strangers exchanging murders was one of "two almost perfect flashes of brilliance in her career."<ref name="Wilson2003" />{{Rp|page=219}}

The novel introduces major themes in Highsmith's work including the complementary nature of good and evil, an implied homoerotic attraction between male antagonists, and shifting identities.<ref name="Wilson2003" />{{Rp|pages=98, 127–128}}<ref name="Schenkar2009" />{{Rp|page=258}} On the novel's release, a ''New York Herald Tribune'' critic praised it for its suspenseful plotting and perceptive portrayal of a psychopath.'''<ref name="Wilson2003" />'''{{Rp|page=168}} A critic for The ''Times Literary Supplement'', however, criticised it as a confected thriller with a preposterous plot.<ref name="Mawer2004" />{{Rp|page=10}}