Right now, theatergoers can see two films concerning a New York publisher’s envoy staying at the home of a venerated novelist to help squeeze a new book out of the situation, which proves unexpectedly hazardous. Naturally, the option that’s terrible, Verity, has made a nine-figure load of dough.

Then there’s A Talent for Murder. Unlike Verity, it’s not an erotic thriller. Unless snails count.

Weapons’ Alden Ehrenreich is the publisher’s rep, Edward Ridgeway. Helen Mirren (Winchester) is the author. And not just any author, but crime-fic legend Patricia Highsmith, she of Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley. In 1995, Ridgeway travels to Switzerland with a contract, in hopes of convincing Highsmith to cap her brilliant career with a sixth Ripley novel.

Because his predecessor vanished eerily after visiting Highsmith’s home, Ridgeway knows his mission won’t be a breeze. Her face set on permasour mode, Highsmith proves arrogant to the nth degree and saltier than a dozen bags of Rold Golds. She openly displays a collection of sharp weapons. And her kitchen is loaded with toxins and poisons that seem to coarse through her veins, only to emerge from her mouth as venom — with exquisite diction, mind you. 

You need not be familiar with Highsmith or her work to enjoy what stealthily boils into a beguiling mystery. As she and Ridgeway talk shop, a potential story for the book takes shape, which we see play out on the cobbled streets and in country estates of Italy. In this “movie” within the movie, the jet-set metrosexual Ripley (also Ehrenreich) schemes his way into a fortune by way of wooing a wealthy family’s youngest heir (Olivia Cooke, Ready Player One). Among other actions. As was the case with director Anton Corbijn’s underrated (and equally literate) spy thriller, 2010’s The American, these Italian sequences amount to visual intoxication.

Meanwhile, in the real world of Switzerland (although A Talent for Murder is not based on true events), we suspect Ridgeway is being manipulated by a master. Mirren sure plays Highsmith as a sinister spinster, her dowdiness disguising a mind capable of conjuring the best of worst possible deeds. Ehrenreich ultimately walks away with the film by handling two roles of opposing forces, the Ripley part of which showcases a smile just a few wrinkles shy of Jack Nicholson’s iconic grin of mischief from the 1970s and ’80s.

It’s rare for a modern suspense story to operate several steps ahead of its audience and hold that advantage throughout. The film isn’t a whodunit, but a wholldoit. Wherever it was taking me, I wasn’t quite certain, but all-in for the ride. These days, that’s pure pleasure. —Rod Lott

In theaters Oct. 23.