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.

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.

"[2] Narcejac also confirmed to Richard E. Goodkin that the Orpheus myth, where the hero tries to bring his beloved back from the dead, was another source of inspiration for the novel.

Anthony Meredith Quinton in The Times Literary Supplement called it "a pure exercise in ingenuity of plot" but criticized the book's slow pacing: "When at length it comes the explanation is shocking and brilliant but not quite sufficiently so to justify the long trudge through the preliminary story.

"[5] The Spectator wrote that Boileau-Narcejac "are currently conjuring up the most ingeniously mystifying plots—and convincing explanations—in the business; and all the more so for the poker-faced style," and called the novel "tantalising and quite irresistible like the living dead woman herself.

"[6] In his New York Times review, Anthony Boucher was more critical—he felt that the writers tried to replicate the tricky plotting of their earlier She Who Was No More but met with "unfortunate results.

Robin Wood commented: "The drab, willful pessimism of D’entre les morts is an essentially different world from the intense traffic sense of Vertigo, which derives from a simultaneous awareness of the immense value of human relationships and their inherent incapability of perfect realization.

"[8] David Collard called the novel "a modestly competent psychological thriller" and added that "it's fair to say that it would attract little attention today had it not formed the basis of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo.

In 1998, the play was produced at the Theatre Royal Windsor starring Martin Shaw as Flavieres and Jenny Seagrove as Madeleine.