'My secrets - the secrets that everyone has - are here, in black and white.'

Before Alfred Hitchcock adapted her debut novel, Strangers on a Train, for the big screen; before Thomas Ripley snaked his way into the canon of psychological suspense; before Carol became a cult classic of romantic obsession, who was Patricia Highsmith?

Beginning in 1941 and encompassing Highsmith's adventurous twenties, The New York Years is an intimate self-portrait of a young artist, reading vorac ...