The dominant mode of the crime novel in pre-war European fiction was much as it had been since the birth of the genre: the whodunit. Unreeling a mystery, clue by clue, until some heroic or slightly quirky detective could triumphantly announce the identity of the evildoer was the essential nature of such books, both in the English-speaking world and on the Continent; although minor variations could occur, the overall approach was unchanged, and aside from a few pulp outliers, no one dared to question it.
With the end of the Second World War and the arrival of American crime dramas — memorably given the name films noir by French critics — that all began to change. The emphasis shifted from plot and story to mood and tone, and the question of who committed the crime became secondary to why it was committed and how it affected those involved. Into this new milieu of crime fiction came Pierre Boilieu and Thomas Narcejac, a pair of philosophically compatible novelists who, teaming up to write books under the nom de plume of their combined surnames, became the most celebrated writers of suspense in the country. Their first book together, published in 1952, was their masterpiece: Celle Qui N’Était Plus, released in English a few years later as She Who Was No More.
The book was so successful that it set off a bidding war over the film rights, which was won by the French director Henri-Georges Clouzot, whose proximity to the authors gained him a slight advantage over the other leading contender, Alfred Hitchcock. (Hitchcock settled for the rights to the pair’s third book, D’Entre les Morts [Among the Dead], which he would film as Vertigo.) Clouzot would release a film adaptation a few years later, written by himself, under the name Les Diaboliques, and it became a legend in its own right; to this day, it’s considered one of the greatest suspense films of all time. The film featured a pitch-perfect cast, a brutally tense sense of timing and dread, some tremendous dialogue, and a slightly more elegant title.
However, the novel was never forgotten — at least not in France — and has been more or less continually in print ever since in a dozen languages. As part of a plan to read more crime fiction this year, especially that which could be categorized as or influential on the genre of noir, I dove into it this month. In a lot of ways, Celle Qui N’Était Plus is an obvious first novel; its pacing is a little off at times, the dialogue isn’t always the most accomplished, and it lacks the finesse and razor-wire efficiency of some of the duo’s later work. But it’s also a work of distinction and a clear beginning of a partnership that would rightfully cement them as the most productive partnership in French fiction.
The book’s story centers on a restless but dull traveling salesman named Fernand Ravinel, poorly married to a mousy woman named Mirielle. He drives listlessly from one city to another, completely unfulfilled in his relationship but unable to break from her or her irritating family, and when he finally begins an affair — with the brittle and determined physician Lucienne — it seems to him as great a trap as his marriage. He doesn’t really hate Mirielle, and he doesn’t really love Lucienne, but he lacks the determination or internal resources to do anything about it. Still, something has to give, and he and Lucienne determine to murder Mirielle by drowning her in the shed of his meager bungalow, and after an excruciating wait, they execute what seems to be the perfect crime — until Fernand goes to dispose of the body and finds that it’s missing.
From there, things begin to unravel in a way that marks Boileu and Narcejac as the terrific storytellers they would become. Fernand trusts no one, not even his own senses; Celle Qui N’Était Plus is one of the best examples in post-war crime fiction of a man slowly losing his mind, and passages where he slowly retraces the path that led him to murder, growing more uncertain at every stop that he has slipped somehow into a world of ghosts, are the strongest in the book. It’s disorienting in the best way, and its ultimate denouement is a real gut-punch, less splashy and shocking that the famous ending of the movie, but no less effective.
Les Diaboliques takes a lot of liberties with the stories, and while overall it’s a more successful piece of art, one of its few missteps, in making the male lead the victim, is creating a character so unlikable you actively root for his demise. Fernand, in the novel, is impossible to like, but he’s also impossible to hate; so, too, are Mirielle and Lucienne, creating that perfect noir triangle of three people who have no business even being around one another but who are so inextricably bound that the only way out that any of them can see is murder. What happens in the film is the result of an acidic passion; but in the book, each of the three can barely muster enough feelings for one another to care, which makes the ultimate and inevitable decision to kill all that more powerful.
On their own, both Boileu and Narcejac (born Pierre Ayraud) had won the Prix du Roman D’Aventures. I’m not familiar enough with their work, separately or together, to know what qualities were brought to the fore by their collaboration, but Celle Qui N’Était Plus clearly marks the beginning of something new, not only for them, but for the entire world of French crime fiction. It provides a clear path forward for both the romans noir of the ’50s and ’60s and the heist movies and thrillers of Claude Chabrol, Jean-Pierre Melville, and Jacques Becker. Influenced by the cynicism and bitterness of the post-war world, the cheapness and brutality of pulp fiction, the class and style elements of American crime dramas, and the murky interior landscapes of existentialism, it’s truly a landmark work — flawed but beautiful, and dangerous but compelling, like the best crimes always are.