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Word: ravinel (lookup in dictionary) (lookup stats)
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Monique (by Dorothy and Michael Blankfort) is a child of the same French novel-The Woman Who Was No More -as the film Diabolique. The two are by no means twins, however. In the stage chiller, when Fernand Ravinel's wife refuses to dissolve their unhappy marriage through divorce, his doctor-mistress Monique suggests dissolving it through murder. As the efficient Monique drowns the wife in a bathtub and then makes her appear to drown in a stream-a Lady Macbeth superintending an Ophelia's fale -a scared Fernand quivers like jelly and wobbles like a tenpin...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: The Theater: New Plays in Manhattan, Nov. 4, 1957 | 11/4/1957 | See Source »

...pygmy is a traveling salesman named Fernand Ravinel who has the face of a brute and the soul of a sparrow. His mistress, Dr. Lucienne Mogard. is as cold and sharp as a scalpel. When they entice Ravinel's wife Mireille to Nantes, their object is murder and their motive is 2,000,000 francs of insurance money. As a killer, Ravinel proves tender and compassionate. After Mireille drinks a carefully prepared potion, her eyes close and Ravinel tearfully helps to lower her inert body into a bathtub full of water. "Don't worry, Mireille," he says...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Books: French Triangle | 4/26/1954 | See Source »

Mireille is left to soak in the tub for 48 hours, then driven to a Paris suburb and dumped into a pond. A bit later, when Ravinel returns to discover his wife's "suicide." her body has disappeared...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Books: French Triangle | 4/26/1954 | See Source »

Mireille's body is not in the Paris morgue, and, most unnerving of all, it shows signs of life. Ravinel receives letters in Mireille's handwriting and learns that she has registered at a Left Bank hotel. Even proud, logical Lucienne reacts with a look of stupor and alarm to the baffling news, but expresses a violent professional conviction: nobody could be alive after 48 hours under water. The guilt-stricken Ravinel takes it harder; he is convinced his wife is a ghost, and he goes to pieces puzzling over how Mireille can be dead and alive...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Books: French Triangle | 4/26/1954 | See Source »

...mystery is not likely to puzzle the reader as much as poor Ravinel, but Authors Boileau and Narcejac keep the reader guessing the rest of it to the Gallic...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Books: French Triangle | 4/26/1954 | See Source »

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