The one that wasn't

The French port city of Nantes is shrouded in a thick fog, faintly illuminated by the glow of gas street lamps. In one of the flats on the embankment, someone is filling a bathtub with water, and in it floats a lifeless female body…

This psychological crime novel with mysterious elements builds on a tense, noir atmosphere, a precisely constructed plot, and an unexpected, even shocking, conclusion. At its centre is the somewhat morally unstable businessman, Ravinel, whose marriage to the respectable Mireille is disrupted when the ambitious doctor, Lucienne, crosses their path. Ravinel's hitherto dull life gradually turns into a nightmare in which the line between reality and illusion becomes fatally blurred.

The novel was adapted into a film in 1955 by Henri-Georges Clouzot under the title Les Diaboliques and again in 1993 as Diabolique by Jeremiah S. Chechik, starring Sharon Stone.