Pushkin Vertigo

2 primary works

She Who Was No More

by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac

Published 5 November 2015

Every Saturday evening, travelling salesman Ferdinand Ravinel returns to his wife, Mireille, who waits patiently for him at home. But Ferdinand has another lover, Lucienne, an ambitious doctor, and together the adulterers have devised a murderous plan.

Drugging Mireille, the pair drown her in a bathtub, but in the morning, before the "accidental" death can be discovered, the corpse is gone-so begins the unraveling of Ferdinand's plot, and his sanity...

This classic of French noir fiction was adapted for the screen by Henri-Georges Clouzot as Les Diaboliques (The Devils), starring Simone Signoret and Véra Clouzot, the film which in turn inspired Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. A second movie version, Diabolique, followed in 1996, starring Sharon Stone.

Vertigo

by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac

Published 8 May 1997

An irresistible gift edition of the mindbending thriller that inspired Hitchcock's Vertigo

He isn't a cop anymore, but when an old friend asks Flavières to keep an eye on his dazzlingly beautiful wife, how can he refuse? And so he begins to scour the streets of wartime Paris in search of a woman who belongs to no one, not even to herself.

Soon, intrigue is replaced by obsession, and dreams by nightmares, as the boundaries between the living and the dead begin to blur...

This is the original breath-taking psychological thriller behind Hitchcock's legendary film-the story of a desperate man, tormented by his search for the truth, and ultimately destroyed by a dark, terrible secret.