FFB: Heart to Heart - Boileau & Narcejac

THE STORY: One evening a singer and her piano playing lover have an argument with the singer's composer husband ending in the piano player killing the composer. The two lovers cover up the murder by making it appear that the husband died in a car accident. But their trouble is only beginning. Only a few days later the wife receives a package from, she thinks, an unknown admirer. Inside is a record and when it is played she hears the final song her husband composed called "Heart to Heart." In an odd mix of devotion and hatred he asks her to record it while simultaneously accusing her of his murder. If she records the song he promises all will be well, but if she refuses he will send on a letter to the police. Then she learns that her friend, a music publisher & producer, also received a package -- the manuscript of the music along with a set of lyrics. He also wants her to record the song. Will she give in to what appears to be blackmail from beyond the grave?

THE CHARACTERS: Heart to Heart (1959) was originally published in French under the title À Coeur Perdu (To a Lost Heart), a more fitting title encapsulating the themes of obsessive love, jealousy, possession, and retribution. As usual for Boileau and Narcejac, the story is told from a male viewpoint.  Almost exclusively we see all the events through the eyes of Jean Leprat, the pianist lover who mortally wounds Maurice Faugères when he strikes him on the head with a heavy candlestick. I noted only one scene when the story shifts to Eve's viewpoint and Jean is not present. Otherwise, we are lost in Jean's obsessive world. It is almost strictly a two character piece with the story focusing on the aftermath of the crime and Eve and Jean's embroiled love-hate affair. They are typical of the tortured lovers that fascinate these French writers. Jean like Fernand Ravinal, the protagonist of She Who Was No More, is trapped by his emotions and lost in his thoughts. Interestingly, prison imagery is prevalent recalling their masterful thriller The Prisoner (Le Louves) published four years earlier. Jean muses over his desire to be free of the woman without whom he cannot live with lines like this: "To think that I love her so much -- as though I were some kind of animal and she were my mate!" Also like Ravinel Jean finds himself at the mercy of a controlling ghost of whom he remarks: "Eve belonged more to a dead man than to the living one."

Faugères' method of revenge is music. All three know that the song "Heart to Heart" will be an instant hit with its beautiful melody and lyrics describing intense longing. Jean describes the song this way: "It was a love song with a taste of tears, the rather embarrassing pathos of a farewell. But the refrain was virile stirring. It proclaimed the triumph of life." But Eve cannot sing such a song that is clearly her husband's plaintive call to her. The song is indeed recorded, but by Florence, a woman singer who was Eve's rival and who she feels is less talented, hardly an artist. Of course the song becomes a huge hit playing on the radio many times a day. And the two lovers cannot escape the song. Jean hears taxi cab drivers whistling the tune. Eve is annoyed when a elevator boy hums the song. It plays over the speakers in stores. Everywhere they go they hear the song. Jean comes to the horrible realization that Maurice Faugères "was stronger dead than alive."

INNOVATIONS: The police get involved when there are faint hints of foul play at the scene of Maurice's car accident. But it becomes a full blown investigation at the novel's midpoint with an unexpected murder of a supporting character that comes as a shock to the reader. Borel, the lead investigator, has as his primary clue only the sound of a woman's voice. A cab driver reports to the police that he dropped off a woman in the vicinity of the building where the crime took place. The most distinctive feature he can remember was her low and resonant voice, a voice like a radio singer. And so the book becomes not only about music and lyrics and the emotion carried in a powerfully written song but sound of all types. It's a brilliant addition of how sound and voices can become a surreal form of haunting that will eat away at the fragile consciences of our guilty duo.

Further building on the device of the several recordings that the dead Faugères has somehow managed to send to his wife and her lover the writers have Borel conduct an experiment in recording of his own. The policeman tracks down several woman singers and recording artists and asks them to speak the lines spoken to the cab driver and records them on tape. He plays all of the voices for Eve but she catches on quickly. She not only speaks the few sentences into the tape recorder she says, "Why did you not ask them to sing?" And then for the first and only time in the novel Eve sings the song "Heart to Heart." We never get to read the lyrics (a wise choice on the writers part) but we are told this:

She sang the first verse softly, her eyes fixed on Leprat. It was for him that she was singing. For him and for Florence, whom she was crushing with her talent. Florence ceased to exist. The challenge lent unbearable poignancy and sadness to Faugères' words. His song of farewell to Eve was transformed, in this police office, into her farewell to Leprat. Her face gradually became suffused with inexpressible grief, her voice took on inflexions that came from the blood, from the entrails; it was lacerated, agonized, and triumphant.

Sound -- whether it be the spoken voice, the singing voice or music itself -- is the real force of haunting in this story of obsession and possession. There may be the imagined ghost of Faugères reaching out to them but for these people for whom sound is such an important part of their lives, for whom music is an energy more powerful than their love for each other, it is sound that will be their undoing.

Danielle Darrieux (Eve) and Michel Auclair (Jean) in Meurtre en 45 tours (1960)

THE MOVIE: The novel was adapted for the screen as Meurtre en 45 tours in 1960. Freely adapted is more accurate. Extensively changed with most plot elements rearranged, the only features that remain unaltered are the characters' names, their relationships, and the recordings sent to Eve after her husband dies. In this rewritten movie version we never really know who killed Maurice until the rather ridiculous ending. Throughout the movie Eve and Jean suspect each other of causing the car wreck that kills Maurice. Gone is best part of the book -- the ingenious use of sound and music as methods to prey on their guilt. The screenwriters were clearly influenced by the success of Les Diaboliques (1955) and play up the possibility that Maurice may in fact be alive. The movie can be seen online in both French and English. Unfortunately, the English version is dubbed rather than subtitled.

EASY TO FIND? If you read French you are in luck. There are multiple used copies in various editions of À Coeur Perdu, all at cheap prices, from numerous US, UK and European dealers. Nearly all of these French books are paperback reprints. But the 1959 English edition (translation by Daphne Woodward) from Hamish Hamilton is a scarce and highly collectible book. There was only one hardback edition published in English and no paperback reprints that I know of. Currently there are only two copies available for sale: one is offered by an Australian dealer for US$108 and the other from the estimable Mysterious Bookshop in New York City for $125. Both are in fine condition and include the handsome DJ as shown from my copy up at the top of this post.

This is my second favorite suspense novel by Boileau & Narcejac. It stands out as an example of that all too rare work in genre fiction -- an artistic crime novel. They continue to explore their favorite themes of obsessive love and guilty consciences, incorporate the ghost and haunting angle, and the powerful metaphoric use of music and sound makes it all sheer brilliance. Though it all ends in genuine tragedy the book also has very slight touch of the detective novel in the second murder investigation that ought to please the purists. If you are fortunate enough to find a copy I highly recommend this. I'd go so far as to claim that this is superior to their other two well known books made famous by the movies Vertigo and Les Diaboliques, but not quite at the same level as their masterpiece The Prisoner.

FFB: She Who Was No More - Boileau & Narcejac

The crime novel plot motif of losing a corpse is often the basis for a black comedy romp. Craig Rice used this gimmick repeatedly in her novels featuring Jake & Helene Justus and John J. Malone, and it shows up in hundreds of movies notably Hitchcock's The Trouble with Harry. But in the hands of Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac a disappearing corpse is hardly a laughing matter. Celle Qui N'Etait Plus (1952) was the first collaboration between these two French writers who previously had both won French crime fiction awards for their solo efforts. The success of the duo's first book would lead to a long lasting friendship and over thirty more books as a writing team. In a nod to the novels of James Cain we get an avaricious, adulterous couple who drown the man's wife in a bathtub then manage to lose the body after dumping it in the lavoir (a French communal laundry near a river). It's a study in guilt, remorse and madness more than it is a detective novel. In fact, there is only one policeman who appears and he's a traffic cop who makes a brief cameo at the very start of the book. Boileau and Narcejac are more interested in the terror that resides within the mind of a guilt ridden murderer than they are the usual criminal investigation plot.

There is very little action in this book with most of the novel focusing on the thoughts and delirium of the main character. You may know the story from one of the several movie adaptations, but they are just that - adaptations. The film tells the story of two women drowning a husband while in the book a philandering couple murder the wife. The only things the book and the film have in common are a bathtub and the guilty imaginings of one of the killers. While the film takes a very different path to convey the terror of a guilt ridden mind with some indulging in horror movie motifs, the book is a bit more mundane in the way the same terror is depicted.

The main character in the novel is Fernand Ravinel, the husband. Fernand is an ineffectual travelling salesman who hawks sporting goods. His special talent is designing and creating fishing flies which take up an entire page in his company's fisherman's supply catalog. But Fernand is otherwise dull, unassuming and in frail health the result of a minor heart attack. He and his mistress Lucienne, a doctor, conspire to do in Fernand's wife Mireille and claim the insurance money. It is Lucienne who does the dirty work while Fernand unable to watch his wife being drowned in a bathtub leaves the room and listens to the murder being carried out. His only act as an accomplice drugging a beverage his wife drinks and fetching the andirons from the fireplace that will hold the body under water. It's a clinical murder carried out with the precision of a surgery. Later they transport the body to the Ravinel's home and unload her into the river that flows through the lavoir. When Fernand coaxes one of his bar mates to visit the lavoir under the pretense of assessing it for repairs he is shocked when his wife's body is no longer there. Thus begins his slow descent into a surreal world of strange events and morbid imagination.

There is an abundance of fog imagery throughout the novel. Boileau and Narcejac use this old Gothic novel trapping in a unique way. Since his childhood Fernand was obsessed with fog and used to play an odd game in which he disappeared into the fog, sort of an astral projection, where he sent his mind into the fog imagining that he has crossed over from the living to the dead. This idea of crossing over is further elaborated throughout the novel as Fernand tries to come to terms with whether or not Mireille is actually dead. She keeps turning up in their house leaving notes. There is even a report that she visited her brother though he was the only witness. The brother-in-law's wife resents that Mireille did stay long enough so she could see her too. This fact plants the seed in Fernand's mind that his wife may have been a ghost. Then he obsesses about a small detail -- Mireille kissing her brother's cheek. He wonders how the kiss felt, if it actually took place, or if Germain (the brother) was merely telling a story to make him jealous. Is she a ghost? Is she alive? If so, why does she not show herself to him? Did the murder take place or has he completely lost his mind?

There is a subtle suggestion that Mireille and Lucienne are the real adulterous lovers. Typical of the 1950s Lucienne is described as "mannish" and being stronger than Fernand. He cannot remember why he was attracted to her or what started their affair. A telling moment of his ignorance -- of his own life being enveloped in a thick fog of overlooking the obvious -- is when he finds photographs of a vacation the three took together. The pictures show Lucienne and Mireille smiling and joyful. Fernand is absent from them all. He cannot even remember taking the photographs himself. All he wonders is "Where am I? Why did no one take any photos of me?"

What little action there is comes in brief moments between Fernand and one other character. Very rarely are more than two people ever present in any scene. The novel is one of isolation. The real setting of the book is Fernand's mind. The story is almost exclusively made up of his thoughts, memories, reveries, and the "fog game". Boileau and Narcejac set the groundwork for their future crime novels centered on the aftermath of murder and how the criminal is in some ways more of a victim of his crime than the actual corpse. Like many of their best books this debut comes with one gut wrenching, shocking scene and a surprise twist in the final sentences.

She Who Was No More attempts to blend the conceits of a ghost story with a murder tale resulting in a claustrophobic, dreary world of doubt and mistrust. It is a loveless world with no real hope culminating in one of the most downbeat endings that rivals any American noir. French crime novels seem to be drenched in self-inflicted misery, more deeply affecting to the characters than the most violent crime.

After decades being out of print and nearly all scarce paperback editions in English translation having being bought up by covetous collectors She Who Was No More is once more available in a new paperback edition from Pushkin Vertigo. They have reprinted the original 1954 English translation by Geoffrey Sainsbury (published as The Woman Who Was No More) rather than having a new edition translated. He does a fine job though he lapses into a stilted British idiom a bit too often. Nevertheless, fans of Boileau and Narcejac and those familiar with Les Diaboliques (or The Fiends), as it is known in the movie version, ought to grab a copy soon. Reading the novel is a revelation and an education into the beginnings of a writing team who unlike many lived up to the promise of their first book and proved to surpass this experimental crime novel with a handful of similarly groundbreaking work.

FFB: The Double Death of Frédéric Belot - Claude Aveline

True 1st US edition (Henry Holt, 1940)

Every now and then a writer not primarily known for his work in crime fiction will try his or her hand at the genre and devise a novel so sublime and so subtle that it outshines the most ingeniously constructed puzzles of the Grand Masters of the trade. Claude Aveline's first attempt at a detective novel, The Double Death of Frédéric Belot (1932), is such a book. Using a typically bizarre double murder, as might be found in any Golden Age whodunit, for the framework of his story Aveline presents a story of deeply human characters and realistic, not melodramatic, motives for the crimes committed. A story that initially comes across as a baffling puzzler of a motiveless murder eventually transforms into one with a truly tragic outcome and a bittersweet poignancy.

Frédéric Belot is a master detective, the genius of his police department, the one to whom all other officers look up and respect. He is even tapped for an important promotion but wants nothing to with a high profile police job that would take him away from real detective work and saddle him with administrative meetings and – the bane of existence – public appearances at important government functions. Scandal hits the police department when his godson, Simon Rivière an inspector in the same department, finds the body of Belot in his recently renovated home on Rue Crimée. He's been shot twice -- once in the chest, again in the head -- and is amazingly still alive. But in the adjoining room Simon and his police team find another shooting victim, this one stone cold dead. The man bears a startling resemblance to Belot from his clothes that are exact duplicates of Belot's to his striking features that make him appear to be his twin. Which man is the real Belot?

Reissue US edition
(Doubleday Crime Club, 1974)

The barely alive Belot is rushed to a hospital while the dead Belot is examined at the scene of the crime. The concierge and her husband are questioned. Simon learns that only two people visited the house recently yet no shots were heard. The police doctor discovers that the corpse is wearing make-up and when it is removed there is only a trace resemblance to Belot. Who then was this man and why was he playing the part of Belot's double?

The title, the reader soon discovers, is a pun. For not only has Belot been murdered twice (his double death) it is his twin, or double, who has been killed alongside him. The play with language and dual meanings is as integral to the story as is the theme of disguise and masquerade.

Aveline also plays with the narrative structure. We begin with an anonymous writer narrating the tale, Simon then takes over telling the story of the shootings and the criminal investigation. At key points in the story the narrative is taken over by M. Regnard, the police chief, with Simon providing a written account of that portion of the story. But within M. Regnard's account there is yet another narrator who takes over in the voice of Andre Féron. It is during this portion of the story it is revealed the true identity of Belot's double and the reason for the masquerade. Minor characters earlier introduced into the story suddenly step from the wings to assume leading roles. Slowly it dawns upon Simon just why Belot had constructed a most bizarre double life. Yet a chance encounter with a lovely woman will alter Belot's carefully controlled dual life. As in real life chance plays an equally important role in the ultimate unraveling of the seemingly puzzling shootings in the apartments on Rue Crimée.

The detective novel aspects of the book are well done and show the kind of bravura performances one expects from the French. Aveline explores the bureaucracy and tedious division of departmental police stations with a insightful look at early police techniques, especially in the Identification department headed by the officious character of Cavaglioni. Interspersed with the police procedure we get the kind of detective work normally seen in puzzle novels as in the scenes where Simon is determined to explain the mystery of how the murderer entered Belot's apartments without being seen. The inclusion of floor plans (four of them!) revealing intriguing architectural features allow the reader to join the detective in uncovering the secret of the house on Rue Crimée. As soon as Simon penetrates the secret of the building he is confronted with even more mysteries and puzzles. Layer upon layer, the book never lets up.

The real draw of the book, however, is the exploration of character and behavior. Aveline's portraits of M. Regnard and all the policemen, Madame Morin and her husband, but especially Féron and Belot show his gift for both complexity and nuance in character. The key to the story lies not so much in the secrets of an oddly renovated building but in the hidden lives of the fascinating characters.  Real people always make for more intriguing mysteries than locked rooms and invisible killers.

French/English edition for use in classrooms
(David McKay, circa 1950s or 1960s)

The final chapters of this book turn the entire story upside down. What appeared to be a cleverly developed murder mystery turns out to be an impassioned and impetuous act of violence. Only upon closing the book does it all truly sink in how subtly powerful Aveline's story is. Easily distracted by the illogical and the seemingly impossible the police in Double Death... overlook the most basic of human emotions. The human heart is the greatest mystery of all and often acts in a fashion that defies logic or sense.

Aveline would go on to write a handful of more detective novels, three of them -- believe it or not -- featuring Belot as the detective. I can only assume that they are cases from his early career. It is the only instance I can think of a crime writer creating a detective, killing him off in his debut, and then writing a series of prequels.

The Double Death of Frédéric Belot was reprinted several times throughout the 1970s when Aveline who had abandoned the genre for over three decades returned with a bestselling book The Passenger on the U (L'Abonné de la Ligne U) (1963) that was a big hit in France. Publishers then went digging for his earlier translated crime novels and reprinted all of them.  It is likely you will be able to find any of them, including Double Death... , for relatively affordable prices in the used book trade. I have also seen copies of the original French book offered for sale.

NOTE:  In researching photos and scans of other editions I learned that this book was a major inspiration for the crime novels of Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, my idols in all of French crime fiction.  I can easily see what they were drawn to when reading this book which is truly mesmerizing in its multiple layers.

The Sleeping Bacchus - Hilary St George Saunders

Here's a book that has a unique history. It started as a French mystery called Le Repos Bacchus (1938) written by Pierre Boileau (whose collaborations with Thomas Narcejac I have reviewed here, here and here). Saunders, who wrote as "Francis Beeding" with his own collaborator John Palmer, came across the book in a Parisian bookshop and thought it remarkable after reading it. He had hoped to write his own version, but Palmer died in 1944 before the two could collaborate. Still Saunders managed to get permission from Boileau and wrote the book on his own. This led to the publication in English of The Sleeping Bacchus in 1951. I know nothing of the original French version, but according to the brief history on the DJ blurb Saunders felt that the story was slightly outdated and had to update it. I am assuming that the updating had to do with World War Two since many of the characters are either veterans or deserters of that war and it does play a minor part in the proceedings. This is the only case I have encountered where one mystery writer's book inspired a rewritten and updated version of the story by another mystery writer from a different country. In movies we find this kind of thing happening frequently: Japanese, Thai and Korean horror movies remade in the US by the dozens for example. And most recently the US movie versions of the Stieg Larsson books already successful in their original Swedish. I'm curious if there are other instances of rewritten stories in the book world.

Saunders' book is - like Boileau's - the story of an art theft and an apparently impossible art theft at that. the book presents three "miracle problems" with varying degrees of complexity. The large painting of the title was removed from a locked room under guard. While the thief bungled his escape and was captured the painting could not be found anywhere. Later in the book another thief shows up to retrieve the painting and seems to have climbed over an unscalable wall in a matter of seconds while being fired at by his gun toting pursuers. Finally, a third impossibility occurs when a Black Maria vanishes from a road in full view of several witnesses. There is no sign of the prisoner inside and neither the driver nor the policeman guarding the prisoner can be found.

While the later two impossible problems are less than thrilling and easily solved, the theft of the painting and where it ended up is one of those stunning pieces of misdirection worthy of the master himself - John Dickson Carr. The book itself begins as a detective novel but transforms into a cinematic action thriller. It would be a perfect candidate for a movie these days with a large number of car and foot chases, lots of gunplay, several kidnappings, and a cast of witty and intelligent characters. A scene in which our hero John Marriott is tied to a fence while he watches the second thief take flight over the moors towards the "unclimbable" fence and his rescue by a negligee clad, pistol-packing mama is one of the best in the book. She uses Marriott's shoulder to steady her aim and she fires three shots at the fleeing culprit nearly deafening him in the process but nonetheless leaving an impression of her crack marksmanship.

At one time a rather scarce book copies of The Sleeping Bacchus are now easily obtainable. My quick online search turned up several for sale with the intriguing 1st edition dust jacket shown above. As an example of an impossible crime novel without a murder The Sleeping Bacchus is unique in the genre. And it certainly can hold its own against anything by Carr, Halter or any of the other practitioners of the impossible crime mystery.

FFB: The Prisoner - Boileau & Narcejac

"Love's not all that beautiful. It's a grotesque business."
-- Gervais Larauch from The Prisoner

Sometimes I come across a crime fiction book that has so much going for it that I am hesitant to talk about its content yet feel compelled to bring it to the attention of those who have been unlucky enough not to have heard of it. In the case of The Prisoner (originally published in 1955 as Les Louves in French) by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac I have found such a book. And here is something unique for me -- I will not give even a smidgen of a plot summary. Here is one of those rare books that should be read without any prior knowledge of what happens. The DJ jacket mentions only that the two men in the opening pages have just escaped from a German prisoner of war camp in occupied France. Wisely it goes no further. Neither will I.

From the opening page with the slickly engineered prison escape via cargo truck to the final chilling paragraph the reader is in for a wild ride. It seems to have covered well worn territory with its duplicitous lovers and an impostor motif yet the authors managed to surprise me no less than three times. Just as I think I can outguess Boileau & Narcejac they prove me wrong again and again. If you are familiar with Vertigo and Les Diaboliques, two famous movies based on two of their early novels, then you know the kind of web of deceit these masters are so adept at spinning. The Prisoner easily ranks as the third jewel in a supreme triumvirate of their best crime thrillers. Each of the three make up their crowning achievements – little masterpieces of macabre suspense.

The Prisoner too has been turned into a movie and retitled Demoniac (1957). According to the imdb.com listing it stars François Périer and Jeanne Moreau - two classic French screen actors. It also happens to be one of the few films for which Boileau wrote the screenplay so it's sure to be very faithful to the story. I only wish it were available on DVD. I could not even find one clip on the various video websites that more and more are turning up scenes and entire versions of obscure movies like this.  I think that this particular book would even work on stage as a claustrophobic thriller. With a cast of only four people and a single set it would be also be easy to produce.

I will tempt you further with these tantalizing morsels: that superstition plays a heavy role in the proceedings, and that the narrator of the story is equal parts victim and culprit. There is one scene of ruthless cruelty in particular that took my breath away. The title, too, is metaphorically fitting. I cannot resist including this one passage as an example of the recurring motif of imprisonment:

[S]hould I go, should I stay. I began to realize that the danger was much the same in either case. If I made off, Hélène would soon guess why; it was the surest way to awake her suspicions. If I stayed, I was at the mercy of one false step, one thoughtless remark. I was their prisoner. [...] But hadn't I always been one? With my mother, with my wife, with Bernard in the prison camp and now with these two sisters it was the same story every time; prison and gaolers.

If you manage to find a copy of this book I suggest you snap it up. Like nearly all of Boileau & Narcejac's books that have been translated into English it is a difficult to find title. But it is one of the few that turns up in a paperback edition every now and then. I was fortunate (and incredibly lucky) to find a UK 1st edition in a dust wrapper for the unheard of price of £12. A miracle! It is a book I will hold onto for a long, long time.

The Evil Eye - Boileau & Narcejac

In the opening pages of The Evil Eye nineteen year old Remy Vauberet discovers he can move his legs. A big surprise for Remy since he's been languishing in bed for several years paralyzed from the waist down. He has been waited on hand and foot by two caretakers and was enjoying it all. But only one day earlier a healer visited the house and seemingly cured him by asking only a few questions. Now he's free to roam about the country.

Slowly the cause of Remy's paralysis is revealed to be rooted in the death of his mother. Talk of her death is avoided for fear of upsetting Remy, but he will have the truth. For his first day of new found mobility he takes a walk to the cemetery to pay his respects, but soon learns that his mother's body is not in the family crypt. He brushes this off as perhaps a mistake in his memory but it bothers him all the same.

When exiting the cemetery he is followed by a dog. The animal won't leave him alone and Remy glares at the dog wishing it were dead. Almost immediately after this thought the dog is hit by car and dies. Remy imagines that he was responsible for the dog's death and begins to obsess about this other newly found power. Is it possible that he can kill with a look or merely thinking of wanting someone dead?

At times seems Remy seems more like a tween than a nineteen year old on the verge of manhood. He whines, he throws tantrums, he daydreams, he imagines he is dashing lover. He even wavers between longing for the dependent life of his former idle invalid self and the desire to leave France and get a job and have some purpose. Like many teenagers he is filled with emotional turmoil and conflicting feelings. It doesn't help matters much that the shadow of his mother looms large over the household. The violent events surrounding her leaving still linger in the stifling atmosphere of the Vauberet household. Remy seems trapped even more than he was when he was paralyzed as he desperately tries to shake off a role that was thrust upon him by his family and caretakers.

It takes some skill to begin a book told from the viewpoint of character who is someone to be pitied then watch as he transforms into a villain. Then have all your perceptions of a character turned upside down when the story takes a detour into a new viewpoint. All that has passed is seen in a new light and all the feelings of pity or revulsion or disgust give way to sympathy, compassion and little bit of sorrow. It is with the character of Clementine, the housekeeper and cook for the Vauberet family, with whom the secret of the story resides. It is she who reveals all to us. Clementine, in effect, opens our eyes to who Remy really is and what really happened to his mother. You'd have to be a pretty hard-hearted reader not to feel some sadness for Remy in the final surprising pages of yet another twisty psychological tale from this master duo of French suspense writers.

Faces in the Dark - Boileau & Narcejac

Originally published in France as Les Visages de l'Ombre (1952)
translated by Geoffrey Sainsbury for Hutchinson (1955)

For decades it seems (only about eleven years though) I have been trying to get a hold of the extremely scarce novels of Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac. Only a handful of them have been translated into English and although they were published in mass market paperbacks in the 1950s and 1960s finding an affordable copy these days is like trying to locate the Holy Grail. I was thunderstruck when I found not one, not two, but three all at once hidden in a glass enclosed cabinet in one of my favorite bookstores here in Chicago. I had to ask special permission from the curmudgeon of an owner to open the cabinet so that I could see them and check out what I thought would be the astronomical prices he was charging for them. Considering their condition I thought the prices (amazingly lower than what I expected) were not only fair, but practically a steal. I took them all. And in the coming weeks I will be reviewing all three. Here is the first in the series.

Knowledgeable readers of crime fiction may know why I was so eager to read these books. Boileau and Narcejac are the authors of two novels which have been immortalized on screen as two iconic crime movies. The first novel Celle qui n'était plus became the hauntingly original thriller Les Diaboliques. The other book, D'entre les morts(translated as The Living and the Dead in the English book version), became Hitchcock's classic tale of murder and obsessive love Vertigo. I was hopeful that the first book I selected - in fact the second the two men wrote together - would be just as chilling and twisty as those two films I count as two of my favorites in the cinema of crime.

The first paragraph promised much. A man is struggling with his first book in Braille and gives up in utter frustration. He explodes in a fit of uncontrolled temper practically destroying his bedroom in the process. He is Richard Hermantier, a inventor and owner of a lamp manufacturing company, who is recovering from a freak accident involving a hand grenade left undiscovered from WW2 that he accidentally exploded while doing yardwork. (The book takes place in 1948.) The accident left him blinded and he is being helped slowly back into the real world by his wife, Christiane, and his business partner, Hubert. Richard is visited by a friend Bleche just prior to a convalescent stay at his villa in Vendee where the accident took place. Their discussion provides us with all the background on the accident and Hermantier's past life. Prior to leaving for Vendee, however, strange events are already taking place in the Hermantier household.

Christiane has let go their long time servant Blanche and hired a younger girl named Marceline. Clement, the family chauffeur, has become surly and disrespectful. Richard suspects that he and Marceline have become lovers and care more for each other than they do their employer. Richard also has become less of a commanding presence in his own household now that he has lost his sight and finds that the servants are patronizing to him, that they reluctantly take his orders deferring instead to his wife who apparently has taken control of everything. Left only with his remaining senses of smell, hearing and touch his perceptions are governed more by his imagination than reality. The loss of his sight has trapped him in a world of his own paranoid imaginings. Or are they something more sinister?

A true businessman whose life was his work Richard feels useless and impotent not being back at work. Christiane undermines his every attempt to gain control of his company and return to work. Hubert also seems to be a threat - even a menace - to Richard's plans to get a new-fangled lamp into production at his plant. Left alone in his bedroom he hears rustling and thinks that someone is in the room with him. The authors do an impressive job of conveying the terror Richard is experiencing.

When his black sheep brother Maxime shows up unexpectedly for a visit the story shifts gears. Maxime is something of a libertine.  He borrows money that he never repays, drinks to excess and seduces women with abandon. Marceline becomes his latest conquest leading to domestic complications in the Hermantier household. Maxime is also suffering from a respiratory ailment due to his smoking habit and his indulgent lifestyle. When he disappears in the night without a word Richard's imagination kicks into high gear and the book finally becomes the terror filled story it promised at the start. Two of the best scenes are when Richard is alone in his bedroom yet he is certain someone is there watching him and, towards the end of the book, in a graveyard using only his fingertips as his guide Richard discovers something horrifying.

And yet in the end it's all too familiar. Everything that follows Maxime's disappearance can be guessed at by any well read devotee of crime fiction. Even the requisite final twist in the the last pages fails to deliver the kind of gasp that one would expect from the creators of something as powerful as Les Diaboliques. I am hoping for something better in the other books I have yet to read.  Stay tuned for more on Boileau and Narcejac later this summer.