My least dear Eunice,
I am writing to wish you the worst time of your life in prison.
Have you already realized that your murder was completely useless? Never mind: life imprisonment will give you time enough to think about it. You killed the Coverdales, who were capable of loving and enjoy life in a way that you could never do, with the only purpose of hiding your own disability. Paradoxically, as a result of your awful and silly behavior, the world knows your secret illiteracy. Why was it so hard for you to confess and remedy it?
Eunice, I actually dislike you not only because you are a murderer but because you are also a miserable and unpleasant character. Moreover, you lack personality, so you killed, instigated by that mad and fanatic friend of yours, Joan. You are not a brilliant killer, either, unlike a recent acquaintance of mine, Mr. Ripley, who is a real artist of immorality. If you had been as observant as he is, you would have realized the tape recorder was on and you would have been declared not guilty. Unfortunately, you were at war with machines, except TV, on which you depended.
Mr. Ripley, the most cultivated and imaginative murderer I have ever met, is able to live like a prince in a Venetian palace at the expense of his victim's money. Could you have been as talented? I admit you managed in some difficult situations and you used your exceptional memory in a remarkable way. Nevertheless, you should have taken into account the proverb that warns you cannot cheat everybody all the time.
I know you will never read this letter because you keep on refusing to have anything to do with written words. It does not matter; I only wanted to thank Ruth Rendell for having made you so hideous.
Never yours,
A reader of Crime Novels.
March 1997 (revised in March 2021).
*Inspired by the readings of A Judgment on Stone and The Talented Mr. Ripley.