7.2 /10 1 Votes
Originally published 1952 | 3.6/5 Goodreads Adaptations Diabolique (1955) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Similar The Living and the Dead, 120 Rue De La Gare, Have Mercy on Us All, La Villa d'en face, Morgue pleine | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
She Who Was No More (Celle qui n'était plus) is a 1951 French novel by the writing team of Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac (Boileau-Narcejac). The duo's first book, it is a thriller about a man who, along with his mistress, murders his wife. It was originally published in English under the title The Woman Who Was Not.
She Who Was No More has been adapted for the screen several times, most notably in 1955 as the French thriller Les Diaboliques. The film's director and co-screenwriter Henri-Georges Clouzot made several substantial changes to the plot. According to legend Clouzot beat Alfred Hitchcock to the film rights by mere hours (Hitchcock would later direct Vertigo, which was based on another Boileau-Narcejac novel). Les Diaboliques was a worldwide critical and box office success.
Plot
Fernand Ravinel is a traveling salesman who leads a mundane existence with his wife, Mireille. His mistress, physician Lucienne, desires to open a practice in Antibes so she and Fernand conspire to murder his spouse to collect on her life insurance policy of 2 million francs. They drown her in a bathtub and then stage it to look like an accident, but things spiral out of control when her body disappears.