Chris' personal and professional path, along with his prognostications on luck, echoes Patricia Highsmith's fictional Ripley character, Thomas Ripley (e.g., The Talented Mr. Ripley, Ripley's Game), an amoral, sociopathic bi-sexual, social climber, thief, and murderer, and the central character in Strangers on a Train, Guy Haines, a tennis pro who wants to marry for love and social mobility.