Having just returned from a week and a half in Berkeley and Seattle, I’m catching up on my reading. It turns out that the July 2 edition of The New York Review of Books has two essays of interest to Texas readers (yes, I see your little group, standing alone in the back. Hi there!).

The first is another one of Larry McMurtry’s engrossing essay-book reviews about the history of the West, in this case, two books on the many brutal Indian raids along the US-Mexican border (“Indian Terror on Our New Frontier”). McMurtry, by the way, has a new novel coming out in August, the latest in his Duane Moore/Last Picture Show saga, the last having been When the Light Goes two years ago (you’d think, with a title like that, the author was signaling the end of the road, but no). Unfortunately for many of us, the NYRB knows who its popular writers are and the full of text of that McMurtry review is avalaible only to subscribers or purchasers.

But the second piece can be read in full. It’s Michael Dirda’s “This Women is Dangerous,” his overview of the complete, collected Ripley novels by Patricia Highsmith, a pricey set ($100) from Norton. So, you ask, what has the chilly and murderous Tom Ripley to do with Texas? Highsmith may be the best-known novelist from — Fort Worth.