Written in 1950, Patricia Highsmith's Strangers on a Train is said to be a classic among thrillers. Alfred Hitchcock even based a movie on this book. But I was disappointed.

I don't like to say too much about a book's story because I resent book flaps that give it away and don't want to do the same. It's enough to know, then, that Strangers on a Train begins with two men meeting on a train. One immediately becomes obsessed with the other and stalks him throughout most of the rest of the book, although, of course, a book written in 1950 wouldn't use the word "stalked."

Most of the rest of Strangers on a Train also consists of the other man's thoughts, his feelings of guilt that seem to be on the brink of driving him crazy. He feels guilty about actions he took that he feels were forced on him. And his many thoughts that went on and on and on with endless repetition were so monotonous and difficult to read that I found myself skipping paragraphs.

I'm also not a fan of this book because everyone but one detective is stupid. Granted, because the book was written in 1950, the dialog sounded exactly like a 1940s movie, in which I always thought characters (with the exception of Jimmy Stewart's characters) didn't talk the way people really talk. But that isn't to say they sound stupid. In this book, they do.

The man being stalked, especially, makes one stupid decision after the other. And then, in spite of the stupidity of everyone in the book, the one exception I make, a detective, miraculously understands what happened with the two strangers on a train. Yet nowhere are we told how he figures it out other than his prior understanding of the stalker.

Although I thought I saw all the Alfred Hitchcock movies, I don't remember seeing this one. So I'm going to borrow this DVD from the library and see what Hitchcock did with it.

Strangers on a Train lies somewhere between a murder mystery and a psychological thriller. The story is set in the early 1950's and the feel and writing of the story feels very of-the-time but still relatable to modern audiences. If you like Hitchcock, you'll enjoy this story.