The great Helen Mirren channels crime novelist Patricia Highsmith in her dying days in Switzerland in A Talent for Murder. A publisher's representative sends messenger after messenger to talk her into a new contract. Aldren Ehrenreich accepts her challenge to dream up a new plot. I've always liked Ehrenreich. He successfully morphs into the subject of the new work, based on his meeting on a train (! Highsmith wrote Strangers on a Train, remember?) with lovely Olivia Cooke as an heiress waiting for an inheritance. How to get the pesky relatives out of the way? I liked the feisty portrait of Highsmith. I liked the story within the story. A Talent for Murder almost got me, until a dud of an ending. Patricia Highsmith is frowning, and I've got a half frown myself. 2 1/2 stars.
