Here we encounter Guy Haines and Charles Bruno, passengers on the same train. But while Guy is a successful architect in the midst of a divorce, Bruno turns out to be a sadistic psychopath. "Some people are better off dead," Bruno remarks, "like your wife and my father, for instance." As Bruno carries out his twisted plan, Guy is trapped in Highsmith's perilous world, where, under the right circumstances, anybody is capable of murder.

The inspiration for Alfred Hitchcock's classic film, Strangers on a Train launched Highsmith on a prolific career of noir fiction, and proved her mastery of depicting the unsettling forces that tremble beneath the surface of everyday contemporary life.