The simple bit was writing a thriller with her husband. The complications began when Hollywood came calling, using Joseph Fiennes and Heather Graham as the bait...
A New York Times book reviewer once noted that the detective writer Patricia Moyes, who has died aged 77, "made drug dealing look like bad manners rather than bad morals".
Her heroes are deviants and genial psychopaths. No wonder film-makers from Alfred Hitchcock to Anthony Minghella have adapted her novels. Robert Shore on the enduring appeal of Patricia Highsmith