Sun 29 Oct 2017
BOILEAU-NARCEJAC – She Who Was No More. Pushkin Vertigo, trade paperback, 2015. Translation by Geoffrey Sainsbury. First published by Éditions Denoël (France) in 1952 as Celle qui n’était plus. Reprinted by Rinehart, US, hardcover, 1954. Hutchinson, UK, hardcover, as The Woman Who Was, 1954. Films: Diaboliques (France, 1955; director: Henri-Georges Clouzot); House of Secrets (US, 1993; made for TV); Diabolique (US, 1996).
The collaboration between French authors Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac is perhaps most famous for producing, among several other works of well-regarded crime fiction, The Living and the Dead (D’entre les Morts, 1954), the basis for the movie Vertigo, considered by many to be the best of Alfred Hitchcock’s many films.
Unfortunately, of the the ten titles included in Hubin, only three have been published in the US. She Who Was No More is one of them, and it’s good to have it back in print again, after a long wait of over 60 years. The story is both easy and not so easy to describe. A man’s mistress helps a man kill his wife. They do it in such a way as to make it seem to be an accident which happened while both have solid alibis. Yet when the husband goes to “discover” her body, it has vanished. Disappeared.
Worse, he begins to find notes from her saying that she’s gone away but will be home again soon. More. His brother-in-law in Paris claims that she has stopped by to see him, even after she is supposed to be dead.
What is difficult to explain is what a feverish nightmare of a novel this is, a pure noir fantasy, if you will. A combination of a guilty conscience with a belief in ghosts floods Ferdnand Ravinel’s very being — and perhaps the reader’s, too. What is also difficult is to write a review without saying more, or even without a hint of saying more.
So I won’t. I will say that I enjoyed this oe immensely — but more than that, no. But it is frustrating!
October 29th, 2017 at 10:49 pm
I would love to read their Arsene Lupin pastiche as well.
This, VERTIGO, and CHOICE CUTS are their only title I know of in English.
October 30th, 2017 at 2:49 am
You have done your own Arsene Lupin pastiches, haven’t you, David? I had to look it up, but apparently Boileau and Narcejak did five book length Lupin novels, but only in French, as far I’ve been able to find out.
The two B-N books you mention, plus this one, are the only ones published in the US, but I said in my review, there have been ten translated into English and published in England.
October 30th, 2017 at 2:53 am
For the record, here’s the complete entry in Hubin for the two authors:
BOILEAU, PIERRE (Prosper) (1906-1988); Ref: CA, CC, CS, MC, TC2-TC4. (stories) (chron.) (assoc.)
[] *Choice Cuts (with Thomas Narcejac) (Barker, 1966, hc) [France] Dutton, 1966. Translation of “Et Mon Tout Est un Homme.†Paris, 1965. Film: Paramount, 1991, as Body Parts (scw: Eric Red, Norman Snider, Patricia Herskovic, Joyce Taylor; dir: Red).
[] *The Evil Eye (with Thomas Narcejac) (Hutchinson, 1959, hc) [Paris] Collection of two stories. (Contents)
[] *Faces in the Dark (with Thomas Narcejac) (Hutchinson, 1955, hc) Translation of “Les Visages de L’ Ombre.†Paris, 1953. Film: Pennington, 1960 (scw: Ephraim Kogan, John Tully; dir: David Eady).
[] _The Fiends (with Thomas Narcejac) (Arrow, 1956, pb) See: The Woman Who Was (Hutchinson 1954).
[] *Heart to Heart (with Thomas Narcejac) (H. Hamilton, 1959, hc) [France] Translation of “A Couer Perdu.†Paris, 1959. Film: Cite, 1959, as Meurtre en 45 Tours (scw: Dominique Fabre, Etienne Perier, Albert Valentin; dir: Perier).
[] *The Living and the Dead (with Thomas Narcejac) (Hutchinson, 1956, hc) [France; 1940; 1945] Translation of “D’Entre les Morts.†Paris, 1954. Washburn, 1957. Also published as: Vertigo. Dell, 1958. Film: Paramount, 1958, as Vertigo (scw: Alec Coppel, Samuel Taylor; dir: Alfred Hitchcock).
[] *The Prisoner (with Thomas Narcejac) (Hutchinson, 1957, hc) [WWII] Translation of “Les Louves.†Paris, 1955. Film: Rivers, 1957, as Les Louves (The She Wolves) (scw: Luis Saslavsky, Pierre Boileau, Thomas Narcejac; dir: Saslavsky)
[] *Spells of Evil (with Thomas Narcejac) (H. Hamilton, 1961, hc) Translation of “Malefices.†Paris, 1961. Film: SNEG, 1962, as Malefices (Sorcery; Where the Truth Lies) (scw: Claude Accursi, Albert Husson, Henri Decoin; dir: Decoin).
[] *The Tube (with Thomas Narcejac) (H. Hamilton, 1960, hc) Translation of “L’Ingenieur Aimait Trop les Chiffres.†Paris, 1959.
[] _Vertigo (with Thomas Narcejac) (Dell, 1958, pb) See: The Living and the Dead (Hutchinson 1956).
[] _The Victims (with Thomas Narcejac) (Panther, 1967, pb) See: Who Was Clare Jallu? (Barker, 1965).
[] *Who Was Clare Jallu? (with Thomas Narcejac) (Barker, 1965, pb) Translation of “Les Victims.†Paris, 1964. Also published as: The Victims (Panther 1967).
[] *The Woman Who Was (with Thomas Narcejac) (Hutchinson, 1954, hc) Translation of “Celle Qui N’Etait Plus.†Paris, 1952. U.S. title: The Woman Who Was No More. Rinehart, 1954. Also published as: The Fiends. Arrow, 1956. Film: Cinedis, 1955, as Les Diaboliques (Diabolique; The Fiends) (scw: H. G. Clouzot, Jerome Geronimi, Rene Masson, Frederic Grendel; dir: Clouzot). Also: Warner Bros., 1996, as Diabolique (scw: Don Roos; dir: Jeremiah Chechik). TV movie: ABC, 1974, as Reflections of Murder (scw: Carol Sobieski; dir: John Bickham). Also: NBC, 1993, as House of Secrets (scw: Andrew Laskos; dir: Mimi Leder).
[] _The Woman Who Was No More (with Thomas Narcejac) (Rinehart, 1954, hc) See: The Woman Who Was (Hutchinson 1954).
October 30th, 2017 at 8:24 pm
Yes, I’ve done five Lupin pastiche, the latest appearing in December in TALES OF THE SHADOWMEN (The Third Eye of Osiris).
The B&N Lupin’s received great reviews and like Barry Perowne’s Raffles stories were favorably compared to Leblanc. The pair also wrote about the genre including about Simenon.