Did you ever have any homicidal thoughts about killing a loved one? In the book A SUSPENSION OF MERCY by Patricia Highsmith, this is what Sydney Bartleby thinks about evey night when he sees his wife Alicia. If you like a good mystery then this book is for you. The author makes you continue on reading and always keep you on your toes. You always want to ask yourself why is this happening, he didn't kill any one so why does he act the way he is when the police are around. He might as well kill her since she had been gone so long.

Sydney Bartley is a fictional writer. He lives in the country outside of London with his wife Alicia, who is a painter. They have been only married a little over a year and have many problems with each other. Most of the time they try to stay away from each other so Sydney can do his writing in piece. Whenever he gets a rejection from one of his books which he gets a lot, Alicia can't be near him so she always goes away to London, instead of staying and sympathizing with her husband.

Sydney and Alicia don't have many friends until a new neighbor moves in named Mrs. Lilybanks. Sydney is not very social so he likes to stay inside and write. Many times he starts to think of killing his wife and how he would decompose of the body. This shows that he does not care about his wife, and having these thoughts helps him with his writing. On the other hand you have Alicia. She likes to go out and shop and try to paint. When her new neighbor moves in she always wants to invite her over and spend time with her.

Alicia tells Sydney one day that she is going on a trip. She will not tell him where she is going or for how long she will be gone for. He agrees with her, and tells her that he will not communicate with her. After she has been gone over two weeks Mrs. Lilybanks starts to get worried because she never writesto her. All this time Sydney is doing great alone. He doesn't miss her and sometimes he thinks that he had really killed her and buried her in a field. When the police get involved Sydney never acts normal around them. Everyone thinks that he killed his wife and Mrs. Lilybanks does as well because she saw him carry an old carpet out the morning after Alicia left. She thought that it looked like there was a body in it. Sydney took the rug to a field and buried it as if it was Alicia. When the police found the rug, they think that he put the body somewhere else.

I thought that this book was very good. It made me keep on wanting to finish the book. The whole time I wanted to know what was going to happen to Sydney and what he would do when he found Alicia. This book will have everyone be thinking about the people around him or her and what he or she really think of you. You never know what your neighbors are doing behind their doors. Occasionally you here couples fight and get into arguments but do they really love each other and have good thoughts?

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