Two reviews in one. First, the supercilious parody : 
 Tom : Oh Dickie, that shirt is so gorgeous. It's so you. Where did you get it? 
 Dick : You're not a fairy are you? 
 Tom: No! The very idea! 
 Dick: Well then, I got it from a divine little boutique near La Fontana della Barcaccia in Piazza di Spagna. We should go there tomorrow. 
 Tom : Oh Dickie, let's. 
 Marge (soliloquy) : 
 Dick is just the handsomest American 25 year old trust fund baby in all of Italy. Or this part of it, anyway. Sigh. I love him so much it makes my eyes slightly bulge. But however much I press my cleavage upon his upper parts, and hang my dripping undergarments within his vicinity, I just can't seem to get anywhere. 
 Tom (soliloquy) : 
 Dick is just the handsomest American 25 year old trust fund baby ever. Sigh. Why he wants to hang around with this gourd-shaped bitch I can't say. I really would like to wear all his clothes and pretend to be him for a day. No, make that my entire life. 
 Dick: Tom, for a creepy sociopath, you're quite good company. Let's go boating. 
 Tom: I don't know anything about small dangerously unstable motorboats in stretches of water with no other boat in sight, perfectly situated for a murder. How do you make it go? 
 Dick : You just pull on this here until you can feel it throbbing, then you grab that long thing there and steer it wherever you want. If it doesn't start you give it a good whack with an oar. 
 Tom : Well, if you say so. 
 review number 2 
 This interesting novel is, from a modern persepective, a bit iffy. Conforming to the 1950s stereotype, it elides homosexuality with deviant psychology and gives us a closet gay man* who is so much in love with this unavailable dreamboat - and the dreamboat's lifestyle - that he wants to be him. He creepily manipulates everyone around him and he despises every single human being he encounters, except the dreamboat. The 1950s was awash with sinister gay figures - 
 George Sanders in All About Eve 
 ( and let us not forget Norman Mailer's 1954 essay "The Homosexual Villain" (he said about that time that he believed "there was an intrinsic relation between homosexuality and 'evil.' "). 
 The character of Tom Ripley is also self-loathing, another closeted-gay cliche. He loathes himself to the extent of wanting to shed his own personality like a snake's skin and become someone much better. I think that Tom Ripley therefore was part of the problem which led - to take one example from millions - to Lou Reed's parents making him have ECT to get rid of his homosexual tendencies. 
 Leaving the iffiness of this novel aside, it then suffers from the same thing as all other thrillers and crime novels - we are expecting murders, there's no suspense involved, one's only surprise is that Tom Ripley brains so few people. And also draining the interest away is that we know this was the first of a series of Ripley novels, so we know he won't die and probably therefore won't be caught, murder being a capital crime back then. 
 This novel is in the 1001 Books You Must Read Before Next Week Or Else and I note it appears between Lolita and Lord of the Rings. Once again, poor little Lolita finds herself in some very dubious company. 
 * 
 *in the second Ripley book he gets married - might be worth reading that one to see what Patricia Highsmith thinks is going on with her character