‘She was a monster’: the real Patricia Highsmith, by the people who knew her

A new film starring Helen Mirren explores the Ripley writer’s later years, but was she really so rude and eccentric? Editors and publishers who worked with her look backPublisher and bookseller Otto Penzler has loved Patricia Highsmith’s work all his life, but their first meeting was a washout. In 1984, she agreed to give a reading at The Mysterious Bookshop…