Friend of the Gutter Kate Laity considers Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley and his career on film at Punk Noir magazine. “Tom Ripley was by all accounts her favourite character, one she identified with to the extent that she signed a letter to a friend ‘Pat H, alias Ripley’ and claimed that he was writing his own adventures through her. He’s an intriguing character: one who wants the good things in life and will go to great lengths to obtain them—including murder.”