Patricia and Charlie, sitting in a tree...

Wow. In the last few years of her life, it develops that Patricia Highsmith - everyone's favourite misanthropic, alcoholic lesbian expat (from Texas to Switzerland) crime writer and recreational snail breeder, or at least mine - gave a very positive blurb for Charles Higson's King Of The Ants, calling it "Funny, very tough and full of action." Higson doesn't merit mention in her bio, so I assume the two didn't know each other, and I can't find mention of a full review (so I guess she just blurbed him), but she certainly seems to have enjoyed his writing. I can see why; having only recently learned of his work (see below), I'm proceeding happily through Happy Now, which focuses on various unhappy people whose lives intersect, and finding, in the disciplined transparency of the prose (which strives to accomplish nothing with the language aside from the telling of the story, something I much admire and doubt I could manage) and his interest in perverse psychology, unhappy marriages, and (I gather) murder, a great compatibility with and similarity to the work and themes of... yes, Patricia Highsmith herself. Guess it figures: Graham Greene gave an enthusiastic blurb to Highsmith's Tremor Of Forgery, which, it transpires, is NOT her finest novel, tho' he describes it as such - it's just the one that most closely resembles a Graham Greene book. (You are what you blurb?). Anyhow, I'm enjoying my Higson. Still don't think I'll make it to the Young James Bond books, but who knows...