: The Living And The Dead 1954 Novel plot and novel summary. What is The Living And The Dead 1954 Novel about

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The Living and the Dead (Boileau-Narcejac novel)The Living and the Dead (also known as Vertigo) is a 1954 psychological mystery novel by Boileau-Narcejac, originally published in French as D'entre les morts (lit. '"From Among the Dead"'). It served as the basis for Alfred Hitchcock's 1958 film Vertigo.

Plot
In 1940, Parisian lawyer Roger Flavières is asked by his old friend Gevigne to help in a sensitive matter regarding his wife Madeleine. Gevigne claims that Madeleine has been acting strangely, but that doctors have been unable to find anything wrong with her. She seems to be possessed by the spirit of her great-grandmother, Pauline Lagerlac, who committed suicide when she was Madeleine’s present age. Gevigne is busy managing a shipbuilding business and he asks Flavières to watch over his wife for a while.

Flavières begins following Madeleine, and one day saves her after her jump in the Seine. After the two become close, Madeleine tells Flavières that she feels she has lived before, and that she has a special connection to Pauline Lagerlac and the places she was associated with. One day Madeleine insists on going to a small town west of Paris and climbing an old church belltower. Flavières, unable to follow her to the top because of his fear of heights, witnesses her body falling to the ground. Unable to come near the body, he flees to Paris. Flavières does not tell Gevigne that he witnessed Madeleine’s death. Gevigne, distraught at being questioned by the police over the tragedy, tries to flee Paris but is killed in a German air raid.

A few years later, after the liberation of Paris, Flavières remains haunted by the memory of Madeleine. One day he sees a woman's face in a newsreel filmed in Marseille. Convinced that the woman was Madeleine, he travels there and tracks her down. Despite her initial denials that she is Madeleine, the woman, Renée Sourange, eventually confesses that she was Gevigne's mistress and conspired with him to get rid of his rich wife. Gevigne threw the real Madeleine from the top of the belltower so Flavières could witness it and confirm the suicide to the police, but Flavières's flight from the scene spoiled the plan. Upon the revelation that he never actually met the real Madeleine, Flavières strangles Renée and surrenders to the police.

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