Geschreven door:	anoniem [meer]
Datum ingestuurd:	18 januari 2003
Niveau:	3 vwo
Taal:
Woorden:	267
Opvragingen:	2090 (12 deze maand)
Waardering:	Currently 3.00/5 1 2 3 4 5 3.0/5 (24 stemmen)

Summary
Title: Strangers on a train
Author: Patricia Highsmith
Genre: Suspense

The book begins with two men who meet on a train.
Guy Haines, who hopes to finalize the divorce from his estranged wife,
falls into conversation with Charles Bruno. With a bottle of Scotch Bruno turns the talk
into a plan for murdering.
He would murder the person Guy hates and Guy would murder Bruno’s enemy.
In this case the ex-wife of Guy and the father of Bruno.
It’s a so called perfect murder. “We meet on a train, see, and nobody knows we know each other! Perfect alibis! Catch?”
Guy assumed that once he’s off the train he’ll be free of Bruno and his ideas.
Bruno, on the other hand, believes an agreement is reached with his new-found “friend”.
Suddenly Miriam, the ex-wife of Guy, is found murdered. Bruno has taken matters into his own hands. From now on Guy will be forced to do “his part of the deal.”
Meanwhile Guy has to hide his problems for his wife Ann.
And all this happens when he is just starting a promising architect office.

My own opinion
It’s a very interesting story because it’s for once not the story of a detective finding a murderer because you know who the murderer is from the beginning.
Bruno really wants these murders done and doesn’t know anything about remorse,
while Guy almost gets crazy because his conscience tortures him after committing the murder, a deed done against his actual will.
You feel how the influence of Bruno on Guy develops so that Guy in the end is in a conflict between fear and fascination of Bruno and his own strong moral ideas and finally murders.