Strangers on a Train by Patricia HighsmithMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
It's June 2023 - Pride Month - and it's with pride festivities and honors popping up all over my feed that I decided to busy myself by reading Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith! I mention this because without this context I may not have noticed that Strangers on a Train is not really a murder mystery, but a story of gay love gone tragically wrong.
Here let me explain:
I love mysteries. In fact I’ve begun the process of learning how to write one. I already have a few novel ideas that I’ve roughed out. So, of course, I’ve begun reading more mysteries. I made up a list of novels to try - cozy, classicals, noir, ect. One title on the top of my “psychological mysteries” list stood out: Strangers on a Train
I knew the premise already. This was the first double murder swap. Many stories have referenced or parodied this plot. It was the novel that inspired one of the great American film directors, Alfred Hitchcock, to create a film of the same name. I haven’t seen the film yet, but I’ll watch it soon after this is posted.
Going into it, I assumed that both men on the train agreed, eventually, to swap murders. You kill my wife and I'll kill your father – handshake - deal. I assumed that one guy got cold feet and tried to stop this “run-away train” of events. But he was unable to prevent his victim from being murdered by his new friend, now he’d be forced to follow through or die. That is what I thought I was getting into.
Instead, I learned (and spoilers from this point on) that Guy Haines wanted nothing to do with the proposal of the man on the train. He just wanted to read his book. But Charles Bruno would not leave him alone. Bruno sees Guy reading a book, and sits himself down nearby. Guy is annoyed by this man from before they even exchange hellos. That doesn’t stop Bruno from following him, talking to him, and inviting him to have dinner in his sleeper car on the train. It’s here where Bruno makes his famous proposal.
“Hey! Cheeses, what an idea! We murder for each other, see? I kill your wife and you kill my father! We met on the train, see and nobody knowns we know each other! Perfect alibis! Catch?”
It’s obvious Bruno has been planning this moment for ages. His speech is so rehearsed that he just steam-rolls over Guy’s objections and rejections. He’d gotten on this train planning to find someone to help him. He’d expected the conversation to go one way, but Guy refused to take the bait. After the proposal is made Guy leaves.
Bruno has no illusions at this point. He knows Guy is too decent to help him commit murder. But he can’t stop thinking about him. Even when he’s back in Santa Fe he calls Guy to have an uncomfortable conversation. Guy once again expresses no interest whatsoever in Bruno, or his help. Still Bruno is single mindedly obsessed with Guy. He knows that his new best friend is unhappy. He knows why, and he knows what to do to help.
“When his mother left town, he intended to crack open the idea and start thinking in earnest. His idea was to go and get Miriam. The time was ripe, and the time was now. Guy needed it now. In a few days, a week even, it might be too late for the Palm Beach thing, and he wouldn’t.
- Bruno ch 10 p 59
It can be argued that Bruno planned to murder Miriam just to prove that he had planned a perfect murder and that he could/would pull it off. Sure, he intended to kill someone. He wanted to one up Walter. He wanted to feel special.
“Whether Guy came through with his part of the deal or not, if he was successful with Miriam, he would have proved a point. A perfect murder. Some day, another person he didn’t know yet would turn up and some kind of deal could be made.” - Bruno ch10 pg 62
But why Miriam? Bruno had no confidence that Guy would hold up his end of the deal. But he also believed that Guy would be better off without his cruel wife hanging off of his neck. If he was going to commit murder, he wanted to kill someone whose death would benefit a good man like Guy.
When Guy isn't grateful for Miriam’s sudden death, Bruno gets offended. He needs Guy to see how similar they are - how they are kindred spirits. And the only way to achieve this is for Guy to fulfill the other side of the deal.
Thus begins chapters and chapters of Bruno tormenting Guy, pushing him, bribing him, fighting him, lurking after him. Guy is on the verge of quitting his job and his engagement to Ann all because he won’t talk to someone about Bruno. Between Guy's pitiful self-inflicted torment, and Bruno's savage drinking, this part of the story is a real slog. I nearly put it down several times but kept going wondering if Guy would ever actually be pushed to murder Bruno’s father. And when he finally does so, because I guess he thought Bruno might hurt Ann if he didn’t, it kicks off more painful chapters of Guy’s absolute mental dissolve.
Once again I wonder why I’m still here. Sure now there is a private detective sniffing around trying to solve the murders. But most of the tension really comes from whether or not Guy is going to crack and tell on himself or Bruno. And it’s agony. That is until I realized what I was reading. This wasn’t a murder mystery. I already knew who-dun-it. What I was reading, what Strangers on a Train is, is a gay romance. Or a romantic tragedy with at least one gay character written in the format of a suspenseful mystery.
I am ashamed to admit that it took me until the third act to realize that Charles is very queer coded. It took a certain episode of Frasier (Season 2, Episode 3 The Matchmaker) for me to even playfully consider it. To be fair it wasn’t as obvious as Joel Cairo in “The Maltese Falcon” being described as “the heavily perfumed man” over and over.
Unlike Dashiell Hammet, Patricia Highsmith is not making fun of men who behave a certain way in her story. She wrote Bruno as a more realistic gay man. It isn’t painted all over his personality. He reads as an average man with a sinister plan, who just happens to have a crush on a man he met on a train. Bruno's queerness was so realistic that it’s easy to miss. He has such an intense personality that the character reads as a straight but muscular bully who is hounding a weaker willed man to push him into doing something he doesn’t want to do. But once I noticed it, this character trait created a clearer picture.
There are little clues in the story that confirm that Bruno is a queer character. The most obvious clue is Bruno in his private thoughts. By himself he’s allowed to react to Guy with passion that he doesn’t dare show externally. There is also the way Guy, Ann, and others treat Bruno that show that he’s no threatening thug. And lastly, the writer herself offers clues to the character and the way the story was written.
Bruno with himself
Privately, Bruno through his own mental dialogue admits that he doesn’t have much use for women. His best friend is his wealthy, beautiful and graceful mother. She is the only woman he has time for. Even though he "finds himself a woman" after killing Guy's wife Miriam he later mentions how much he hates women, and doesn’t like having sex with them.
“Not only hadn’t he ever fallen in love, but he didn’t care too much about sleeping with women. He had never been able to stop thinking it was a silly business that he was standing off somewhere and watching himself. Once, one terrible time, he had started giggling.”
This is a common, almost stereotypical, trope of gay men worshiping their mothers but having little respect for any other women.
When Bruno calls Guy after killing Miriam, Guy says he never wants to talk to Bruno again. Bruno reacts with heartbreak. He cries broken by Guy’s rejection. His deep depression sends him straight into a bottle of Scotch. This is why he's such a sloppy mess halfway through the book. Guy cannot, or will not give him the love and gratitude that Bruno is so desperate for.
This is why Bruno pushes Guy into killing his father - to make himself Guy’s only confidant. To give them a common secret, and thus pull them together - to make himself something special to Guy. When Guy goes through with it, Bruno feels justified. Now Guy has confirmed to Bruno that he feels the same way they are one. They are blood brothers, sewn together through this deed they’ve both done. Bruno expects Guy to be as changed as he was, and as attached to Bruno as Bruno is to Guy. It breaks his heart that Guy continues to push him away.
As detective Gerard gets closer to finding the killers and understanding the mystery, Guy is tormented by what he's done, but Bruno is tormented that Guy has other friends. Guy goes on a cruise with Anne and Bruno nearly dies from heart ache. Bruno has a nightmare about Guy being caught, and bleeding out in the woods as Gerard chases him. He knows that he needs to stay away from Guy to prevent him being caught, but he just can't. He has to see him, call him, be near him.
In Bruno's final scene he meets Guy's other friends. He gets into a competition with Guy's best man, Bob Thatcher, over which of them has known Guy longer. He sees them all as idiots whereas Guy is a genius. He knows that none of them love Guy as he does. But he also knows that Guy will never get rid of Ann, and will never love Bruno the way he wants him too.
When the case closes Bruno and Guy have nothing to fear and nothing more to bring them together. Guy has friends now, Bruno has no one. Even his mother has gotten sick and ugly. Bruno isn’t welcomed with Guy or among his friends. The case appears to be closed so Bruno has nothing left to tether him to the man that he loves.
Bruno To Others
When I go back looking for quotes and reread earlier parts of the book with this new trait in mind, it’s obvious by how Bruno speaks and how others react to him that Bruno is not the thick-necked, muscular thug I originally pictured.
When Guy first meets Bruno on the train, and Bruno mentions how silly women are, Guy casually notes, to himself, that he didn’t imagine Bruno has much interest in women.
Later Guy mentions how Bruno always notices people's clothes. This is confirmed by how Bruno judges people by what they are wearing in his POV chapters. Guy does the same but to a slightly lesser degree. Bruno even gives Guy a fancy silver belt as an "I'm thinking about you" present. I’ve never noticed two straight guys offering their buddies accessories as presents in my personal life. This silver belt is the same one Bruno’s mother thought about gifting to one of her gentleman suitors a chapter or two before.
Bruno’s queerness is further confirmed through Guy’s fiance’ Ann. Would a smart, wealthy, beautiful woman like Ann, allow a man with any sort of sexual interest in her to spend the night in her house while her husband was away in Canada? Would a threatening man be allowed to crash their wedding with no questions asked, or to become drunk and rude at a dinner party then allowed to sleep it off on the sofa? Would they have not called the police when he shows up at their home repeatedly, especially after she’s realized that it was Bruno whom Guy had fought some months before? If Bruno were a truly threatening individual in appearance and casual behavior he would not have been allowed such forgiveness over and over. The truth is Bruno doesn’t come off as threatening, even when Gerard introduces the possibility that he may have killed his own father. Ann questions this notion repeatedly even when Guy practically confirms that he thinks it's possible. Also, when Guy comes home and finds that Bruno has spent the night at his home he gets angry - not because he’s afraid Bruno might steal Ann from him, but because he’s annoyed that Bruno might seduce Ann just to be closer to him, or to annoy him.
Guy for his part is also kind of queer coded. He’s painted as a less-than-masculine man. Bruno is obviously more aggressive than Guy is, but Guy is more of an intellectual. No one looks at Guy and thinks he could be a murderer. Everyone sees him as a nervous fellow who couldn't harm a fly.
Bruno becomes infatuated with Guy from afar on the train. Perhaps, he hopes that maybe they have a common oddness. Guy even notes how Bruno becomes less friendly when he learns that Guy is married.
My favorite scene in the story is the wedding. The murders of Miram Hains, and Sam Bruno are paralleled with Guy's engagement with Anna. Guy kills Bruno's father just a few months before his wedding, thus in essence declaring his love to Bruno - at least in the sick mind of the psychopath that is infatuated with him. Bruno, therefore, has no qualms about inviting himself to Guy's wedding. He sits at the front and meets Guy's eyes. Guy can’t look away. As a result Guy states his wedding vows, not to Ann, but to Charles Bruno.
When Bruno falls overboard from the boat, Guy jumps in after him… Mentally, Guy is furious that he’s the only one who cares that Bruno has fallen. He calls Bruno his best friend - his brother!
Bruno’s body is never found and in some way I suspected Bruno might have faked his death. But in doing research for this post I found a quote I’d forgotten about. On the train, before Bruno made his infamous proposal he said this when talking about whether or not he could commit murder:
“I’ll do it, don’t think I won’t! Know what else I’ll do some day? Commit suicide if I happen to feel like committing suicide, and fix it so it looks like my worst enemy murdered me.”
As they say, there is a thin line between love and hate.
The Writer and Director
Patricia Highsmith was an out of the closet lesbian writer. She was born in Texas but spent most of her adult life living in France and Switzerland. Her second novel The Prince of Salt was rejected by American publishers for its “frank explorations of homosexual themes''. She later regained some notoriety in the U.S. for her 1955 novel The Talented Mr. Ripley.
She has published over twenty books, has won the O. Henry Memorial Award, the Edgar Allan Poe Award, Le Grand Prix de Littérature Policière, and the Award of the Crime Writers Association of Great Britain. She died in Switzerland in 1995.
Alfried Hitchcock's 1951 film Strangers on a Train has been shamed by critics as being vulgar for its ``insertion” of homosexuality into the film. In fact eight minutes of the film had to be edited out of the U.S. version for being too perverse for American audiences.
My Takeaway
My word. Such delicate snowflakes we must be in the U.S.
As I’ve said, the book was a bit of a slog for me and I haven’t yet watched the movie. Recognizing the gay overtones really brought the characters new life for me. The context that Guy was agonizing over Bruno’s infatuation with him, and that perhaps he had similar feelings towards Bruno, makes some of his anguish between confessions make more sense.
If he wasn’t struggling with some sort of interest in Bruno, or some sort of appreciation for him, then he would have just told Ann about the weird interaction on the train, and told the police everything when Miriam was killed.
But if on some level he liked Bruno back, then he didn’t want Bruno to get into trouble for trying to help him out of a tough situation. Guilt wouldn't have been eating at him so hard that he was about ready to call off his engagement. And if his resolve against Bruno had been strong at all, he wouldn’t have killed Sam Bruno for him.
Without Charles Bruno to define him, Guy spirals out of control. He finds someone to confess his guilt too, someone else who doesn’t care. Just as he’s about over it all, about done with the whole thing, Gerard finally tricks him. Guy is caught for something he never even wanted to do, and he doesn’t even have Bruno to keep him company in jail.
I argue that none of this would have happened if consenting adult men were allowed to love each other in the 1950s. How many women could have been spared loveless marriages wasting their valuable maternal time? How many men could have been spared agonizing shame, guilt, and lust if only they were allowed to pursue the kind of love that was right for them? How many lives could have been spared if such men weren’t shamed into becoming villains and killers?
I can’t say I loved this book. But I have deep respect for the author. Patricia Highsmith wrote a dark gay tragedy and sold it under the nose of the publishers. She wrote directly about the fears of men, finding themselves the victims of an unwanted love, discovering through force that you might be persuaded by that love. And she did it without a kiss, or a rape scene - just blood, sweat, and tears.
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