The Cry of the Owl

Every watcher becomes the watched When Robert becomes fixated on a woman he glimpses through her window, he imagines he's found peace - until she notices him, and their lives entwine in a spiral of suspicion and death. Highsmith's The Cry of the Owl is a study in paranoia and fate, told with chilling precision. Desire, guilt and moral decay blur into one another until innocence itself feels like a crime. 'Extraordinary ... one of her finest novels' Guardian 'A superb portrait of obsession and its fallout' Sunday Times

Patricia Highsmith was born in Fort Worth, Texas in 1921 but moved to new York when she was six. In her senior year she edited the college magazine, having decided to become a writer at the age of sixteen. Her first novel Strangers on a Train, was made into a famous film by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951. Patricia Highsmith died in Locarno, Switzerland in 1995. Her last novel Small g: A Summer Idyll was published posthumously just over a month later.