SOURCE: "The Way We Live Now," in New York Review of Books, March 31, 1988, Vol. XXXV, No. 5, pp. 36-7.

In the following excerpt, Towers offers a mixed assessment of Found in the Street, expressing reservations about Highsmith's "downplaying of the dramatic."

[Highsmith] is prolific, with nineteen novels to her credit, together with six volumes of short stories…. [She] frequently writes from the point of view of one or more of her male characters, who may or may not be "straight"; in fact, taken as a group, Miss Highsmith's characters, male and female, represent a wide spectrum of what used to be called the perverse….

Highsmith is one of those writers of genre fiction who have a following among literary people, especially in England. She has been handsomely praised by Graham Greene, Julian Symons, and Auberon Waugh. In this country she has had enthusiastic readers ever since her first book...