1. For each question, choose the correct answer.

Strangers on a Train, published in 1950, was Patricia Highsmith’s first novel. It is a taut crime thriller, with a highly unusual plot.

A   This thriller was the only book that Patricia Highsmith wrote in the XX century.

B   This thriller has quite a boring plot because it was Patricia Highsmith’s first book.

C   Patricia Highsmith’s first book is a well-written page-turner.

2. For each question, choose the correct answer.

An American, Guy Haines, is 1) ___ a train to his home town to meet his unfaithful wife, Miriam, 2) ___ he wants to divorce. He has dinner with a rich young man called Charles Bruno. Bruno, who becomes 3) ___ drunk, tells Guy that he hates his father. He suggests that he 4) ___ murder Miriam and that Guy 4) ___ murder his father. This, he says, would be 5) ___ perfect murder. Guy is disgusted and resolves never to 6) ___ Bruno again.

1.	a) in	b) on	c) at	d) by
2.	a) who	b) that	c) which	d) whom
3.	a) very	b) so	c) little	d) such
4.	a) should	b) must	c) may	d) might
5.	a) a	b) the	c) an	d) some
6.	a) stare	b) look	c) watch	d) see

3. For each question, choose the correct answer.

Write one word in each gap:

Bruno, however, is mad. He finds 1) ___ where Miriam lives and murders her. Guy suspects that Bruno is the murderer 2) ___ knows that if he goes to the police Bruno will simply say that Bruno asked him to kill Miriam.

Guy tries to live 3) _ normal life with his new fiancée, Anne. But Bruno phones him, writes to him and finally meets him. He threatens 4) __ tell the police that Guy paid him to kill Miriam, 5) ______ Guy kills his father. Finally Guy breaks and does as Bruno wishes; 6) __ murders Bruno’s father.

4. Five sentences have been removed from the text below.

For each question, choose the correct answer,

From this point on Guy is haunted by terrible guilt. 1) _____ He marries Anne, and Bruno appears at his wedding. He hates Bruno, but at the same time feels a close and terrible bond with him. Meanwhile, a detective, Arthur Gerard, is hot on the trail of both Bruno and Guy. 2) _____ There is nothing he can do. 3) _____ They go sailing, and Bruno, drunk as usual, falls into the sea and drowns. Guy feels terribly lonely. 4) _____ He goes to visit Miriam’s fiancé and confesses the story of the murders. Unknown to him, Arthur Gerard is listening. ‘Take me,’ says Guy.

Strangers on a Train is a crime story with a difference. 5) _____ Patricia Highsmith once commented that she is ‘interested in the effect of guilt’ on her heroes. This novel is a study of guilt, and of the kind of pressure that destroys a man’s soul.

A    By now, Bruno is a friend of Anne.

B   Guy feels utterly trapped.

C   It is a psychological study of madness, entrapment and guilt.

D   He feels that he is split into two men – the murderer, and the good man with his charming fiancée.

E   He has lost his brother.