I have a strange thing going on with Highsmith. No matter how much I like the stories themselves (and the stories have inspired so many good movies, such as Purple Noon [1960]), reading feels like a slog. Maybe her novels are too long for their own good and I should try her short stories, but every time I open one of her books, I get the same brick wall between us every time. I don't mean that she's a bad writer, or that I don't like slow and subtle, just that I can never get into her books as much as I'd like to.

Strangers on a Train is no exception. The highly visible homoerotic undertones, Bruno's absolutely demented and delusional mind, the manipulation, the mommy issues, the drama, the murder... All great, but everything is almost clinical, and there's just no tension. Or at least the kind that would keep me on the edge of my seat. Some things make more sense in the movie, and there are aspects I like more in the book, but Hitchcock still deserves my vote.