The story is excellent, but...

As with all the Ripley books, the story is excellent. However, the narrator, while not bad, is also not excellent.

Adam Sims, who narrates Ripley Under Ground and Ripley Under Water is miles ahead of Peter Brooke.

Accents are muddled and don't expect correct pronunciation of foreign words.

Also, he sometimes sounds like he's reading the book and not really paying attention to the phrasing.

Overall, though, it's an enjoyable listen and I would recommend it.

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couldn't stop

Once started couldn't stop... As in the prequel I didn't see that coming, brilliant and entertaining

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Classic, you won't be disappointed

I can't get enough of Ripley or indeed Highsmith. A master of suspense at play. the world she creates is so detailed and believable. The performance of the Narrator strikes just the right pace and tone. loved it from start to finish.

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Tawdry, and tedious

The story, as one expects from Patricia Highsmith, is a tawdry one, full of tawdry characters. But it is also very tedious, without suspense or interest.
As for the reader, surely someone who is about to read a story full of foreign names (but not THAT foreign - French and German) could take the trouble to find out how to pronounce them. Fontainebleau, which is mentioned at least twenty times, is pronounced as it is spelled (fo-tane-blow), not fo-tane-bleu. And Hildesheim is hild-us-hime, not hild-u-shime. Those are just two mispronunciations among many - all very painful for anyone acquainted wtih the languages in question. Other than that, the reader is not too bad, although his attempt at an English accent is not a great success - much too posh.
All in all, not a great pleasure to listen to.

Reliable if unremarkable Highsmith

I really like Patricia Highsmith novels and enjoyed Ripley's Game, but didn't feel it is one of the better novels.
The story is a little too fantastical and the characters don't seem as richly developed as in others.
I really did not warm to the narrator they used, especially when he adopts different voices for female and adolescent characters which I found very pantomime and off-putting.

Poor performance

I can't comment on the story (though am confident that it's great) as I couldn't get past the first couple of chapters. Found the reading to be unlistenable.

Random emphasis of words and arbitrary mid-sentence pauses, etc, means constantly having to second-guess Highsmith's meaning - imagining the text written down and figuring out how it might sound if read sympathetically. On top of that, characters are given exaggerated, caricatured accents, which is similarly baffling and distracting. All very disappointing after enjoying the first two books in the series.

Will get a hard copy of the book and read it the old fashioned way.