Tobias Amman, who renovated her Aurigeno house, to design âCasa Highsmithâ: a white, seemingly windowless block of a house, divided into two âlobes,â whose seclusions and divisions suit her imagination. She calls it âa strong house.â It is a variation on the old Coates boardinghouse in Fort Worth, whose design she consults while constructing it. She signs a contract with the Atlantic Monthly Press to publish her books in America. Gary Fisketjon becomes her editor.
   Claude Chabrol writes and directs a French film adaption of The Cry of the Owl , Le Cri du hibou (starring Christophe Malavoy, Mathilda May, Virginie Thévenet, Jacques Penot).
   Pat changes her English publisher from Heinemann to Bloomsbury.
   29 October: Pat appears in genial form on New York Book Beat, Donald Swaimâs CBS radio interview program for authors. She has come to publicize Atlantic Monthlyâs publication of Found in the Street, and she makes some (for her) revealing statements.
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1988. January: âRipley touches madness,â Pat writes in a cahier. Pat starts taking notes for her fifth Ripley book, Ripley Under Water. It becomes the last and most awkwardly plotted of the Ripleys, drawn from her fascination with sadomasochistic relations, and from her trip to Tangier to visit Buffie Johnson (and Paul Bowles). Ripley again laughs inappropriately at the double death of the âodd coupleâ who irritate him, and he once again tosses incriminating evidence into the Loing Canal, the canal which bordered Patâs best-loved house in Moncourt.
   August: Pat goes to visit Buffie Johnson in Tangier, where Buffie is living and painting in Jane Bowlesâs apartment at the Immeuble Itesa just beneath Paul Bowlesâs apartment. Pat takes extensive notes on life in Tangier which she will use for Ripley Under Water and befriends Paul, whom she knew slightly from her New York years. Paul Bowles and Pat begin a correspondence. The ideas for story and novel titles at the end of her cahier become more bitter: Sweet Smell of Death, King of the Garbage, The Bearer of Bad Tidings, Bright Murder, Dull Knife âand the bilingual jokes get worse: Creepy School (Crepuscule), A Fete Worse Than Death.
   September: Pat receives the Prix litteraire from the American Film Festival in Deauville, France.
   December: Pat moves to her new house in Tegna.
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1990. Pat is made an Officier de lâOrdre des Arts et des Lettres of France.
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1991. 12 March: Mary Highsmith dies at ninety-five.
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1992. January: Little Tales of Misogyny performed as a theater piece by the Companya Teatre de Barcelona.
   Spring: Pat visits Peter Ustinovâs house in Rolle for a double interview with German Vogue . She begins to consult with an American accountant in Geneva about a subject never far from her mind: her double taxation problem. She starts to write Small g: A Summer Idyll .
   October: Pat travels to the United States on a publicity junket for Ripley Under Water, published by Knopf. She reads at Rizzoliâs bookstore in New York and meets the chairman of the Yaddo board to discuss the possible donation of her house in Tegna as an artistsâ retreat. She is dissuaded from this ideaâit is impracticalâand she begins to think of other ways she might endow Yaddo. She goes to Box Canyon Ranch in Weatherford, Texas, to visit Dan and Florine Coates, then travels to Toronto to read at the Harbourfront festival on 18 October. Having initiated a correspondence with Marijane Meaker after twenty-seven years of silence, Pat spends three days at Meakerâs house in East Hampton. The visit does not go well.
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1993. July: She is diagnosed as seriously anemic and told to stop drinking. She does soâcold turkeyâfor three weeks.
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1994. Fall: She makes a last, promotional trip to Paris accompanied by a Swiss