D'entre les morts

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Sueurs froides: d'entre les morts (Cold Sweat: From Among the Dead) is a 1954 roman policier (crime novel) by Pierre Boileau and Pierre Ayraud, aka Thomas Narcejac, writing as Boileau-Narcejac. It is currently marketed under the title D'entre les morts.

[edit] Plot

The story concerns a former detective who suffers from acrophobia, who is hired to follow the wife of a friend who suspects her of infidelity. The detective becomes obsessed with the woman, eventually falling in love with her but unable to explain her strange trances and her belief in a previous life. When she falls to her death from a tower, he is unable to save her due to his fear of heights and experiences a psychotic break. After his partial recovery he encounters a woman who is nearly the image of his dead love, and the obsession begins all over again...

[edit] Adaptation

Alfred Hitchcock directed an adaptation of the novel in 1958 as Vertigo.

The film also alludes to the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. Although the source novel's explicit references to the myth do not appear in the film, certain themes do, including the return of a dead beloved to life, and discovering the fatal consequences of "looking back."