Original Language: English
TÃtutulu Original: The Blundering
Translation: Manuel G. Palace
Year of publication: 1954
Valoración: Between recommended and okay
Patricia Highsmith is one of a writer whose work I have read and reread obsessively. How had a pleasant memory of his novel The knifeI have decided to address it for the second time several years later. And how well he has done it, because often Librazo is made!
Indeed, The knife It is a pound. And although in some sections it gives the impression of not being a work as polished as others of Highsmith, author, stylistic efficacy, thematic sharpness and good narrative pulse.
His argument is brilliant in his simplicity only apparent, and abounds in the ingenious twists, tangles, misunderstandings and clear that enlarge Highsmith’s work. It also works as an excuse to deliver several very detailed character studies, and to reflect, among many other issues, around marriage relationships, dissatisfied desire and guilt.
Everything begins when a bookcase named Melchior J. Kimmel, after making sure that a witness sees him to attend the cinema, leaves the place, continues in his car the bus in which his wife goes and kills her during a rest stop. Walter Stakhouse, a lawyer, reads about the incident in the newspaper and immediately suspects that the victim’s husband can be the murderer, and intuits what method he has used to get his way. Later he begins to fantasize about imitating him to get rid of Clara, his wife, a neurotic that constantly martyrizes him and isolates him more and more of his friends and acquaintances. Clara dies shortly after, apparently after committing suicide; However, a relentless and ambitious detective not only begins to investigate Stakhouse, but decides to reopen the Kimmel case.
The knife It contains a first chapter that immediately hooks the reader, an extraordinarily ingenious premise, a cast of very well profiled characters, some of the author’s own narrative elements and reflections of great caliber.
As usual in Highsmith’s works, the main cast is very well worked. Both Stakhouse (the undisputed protagonist) and Clara, Kimmel and even characters that have less focus (for example Tony, Ellie or Jon) are credible.
I would only put two fights to The knife. First, which presents so much profusion of details that some of them contribute rather little; I think, for example, the relationship that Stakhouse maintains with his brother and his father, in certain information about Kimmel’s suppliers and customers or in the wasted artisanal hobby of the latter. Fortunately, these passages filled with straw do not realize the whole, which on the other hand develops with amazing fluidity.
The second paste that put the novel is that Detective Corby feels at little plausible moments, and works more as a trigger for events than like a character in itself. In any case, we must admit that stars in some of the best scenes.
Little more to add: The knife It is, I insist, a pound. All lover of the black genre and Highsmith’s work should read it, at least, once in their life.
Source: https://unlibroaldia.blogspot.com/2025/02/patricia-highsmith-el-cuchillo.html
