Patricia Highsmith was known to have a nasty personality: misanthropic, racist and anti-Semitic. She was even better known as a brilliant crime novelist, able to delve into the minds of murderers. Does it take a killer to know a killer? That is one of the tantalizing questions bubbling up in A Talent for Murder, in which Helen Mirren embodies Highsmith in all her devious, scowling genius. Although the film is true to Highsmith’s character, the story is entirely made up. Alden Ehrenreich plays the invented Edward Ridgeway, a young representative from Highsmith’s New York publisher, sent to persuade her to write a sixth novel about Tom…
