PEOPLE WHO KNOCK ON THE DOOR

From Highsmith—veteran investigator of violence and the criminal mind (with, most recently, The Boy Who Followed Ripley and Ripley's Game)—comes a new exploration of, this time, a domestic violence, one whose fuse is lit when Richard Alderman, a stolid, small-town insurance agent, husband to mild-mannered Lois and father to two sons, is "born again." So, no stylish Tom Ripley here, only an average American family cloven asunder by Highsmith's version of fundamentalist fanaticism, aggressiveness and hypocrisy. As the story opens, Richard Alderman's oldest son, Arthur, is graduating from high school, falling in love with girl-next-doorish Maggie, wrestling with notions of values and self-respect, and may be, all in all, a little too good to be true. When his oddly intense 15-year-old brother Robbie has a close brush with death due to a "dangerous fever and strep throat," father Richard prays through the night, lands himself a miracle and turns hyper-devout, not to mention intolerant, anti-evolution, and—most important to Arthur, since he's gotten Maggie pregnant—anti-abortion. Nevertheless, Maggie goes ahead and has an abortion and is later caught (thanks to Robbie's diligence) in Arthur's bedroom; Richard kicks Arthur out and refuses to foot the bill for college. Arthur is self-reliant enough to handle homelessness and to get into the local university, but he gets increasingly uneasy as Robbie grows weirder, obsessively religious, and his mother more timid—even when she learns that her husband has had an affair with one of the "church crowd." Then, kaboom. . .Robbie hears about his dad's dalliance and blows him away with a hunting rifle ("Dad deserved it," he says grimly). Arthur moves back home, mom snaps out of her depression; and soon Robbie's looking forward to being released from juvenile detention and joining the Marines. Who's wrong, who's right in this novel? In true Highsmith fashion, we're left unsure—as well as uncaring, since Arthur's awfully callous and such a humdrum protagonist and Richard such a caricature (the deck's so stacked against him from the word go that the reader doubts the novel's verisimilitude). And though Highsmith builds apprehension like a pro, there's no payoff, just a moral knot too easily untied or too unengaging to labor over.