When a troubled young runaway arrives on Tom Ripley's French estate, he is drawn into a world he thought he'd left behind, the seedy underworld of Berlin and kidnapping plots, lies and deception. Ripley becomes the boy's protector as a friendship develops between the young man with a guilty conscience and the older one with no conscience at all.

The psychologists would call it folie a deux...'Bruno slammed his palms together.' "Hey! Cheeses, what an idea! I kill your wife and you kill my father! We meet on a train, see, and nobody knows we know each other! Perfect alibis! Catch?" From this moment, almost against his conscious will, Guy Haines is trapped in a nightmare of shared guilt and an insidious merging of personalities.

Tom Ripley is struggling to stay one step ahead of his creditors and the law, when an unexpected acquaintance offers him a free trip to Europe and a chance to start over. Ripley wants money, success and the good life and he's willing to kill for it. When his new-found happiness is threatened, his response is as swift as it is shocking.

Tom Ripley detested murder. Unless it was absolutely necessary. If possible, he preferred someone else to do the dirty work. In this case someone with no criminal record, who would commit 'two simple murders' for a very generous fee...

Guy Haines is travelling through Texas on a train when a stranger invites him to share a meal. But the stranger has a terrible plan. ‘You murder my father, and I’ll murder your wife,’ he suggests. So begins Guy’s journey into a world of madness, lies and death.