Patricia Highsmith repeatedly challenged the moral compass of her readers with disturbing psychological thrillers.
In her debut novel, Strangers on a Train, she conceived a seemingly perfect murder for every disgruntled husband, which Hitchcock brilliantly adapted for the big screen.
Anthony Minghella tapped into the disturbing sexual undercurrents of her 1955 novel The Talented Mr Ripley for a hauntingly seductively jaunt through Italy.
The Two Faces of January was published almost a decade later and once again, she indulges in obsession-fuelled skulduggery albeit against a vivid backdrop of sun-baked 1960s Athens.
Hossein Amini’s slow-burning film version conceals its Machiavellian machinations behind an elegant facade of impeccable period costumes and picturesque cinematography. Yet, while this assured directorial debut is sweeping in scope, the focus of Amini’s lean script is the characters’ strained relationships and notably the frayed bonds of trust between two men, who must rely on each other to escape a predicament of their own making.