[6] He resumed his writing career in 1945 with the novel L'Assassin vient les mains vides, and scripting a couple of successful radio series in 1945–1947.
[8] In 1947, Narcejac also published an essay titled L'esthétique du roman policier ("The Esthetics of the Crime Novel") which drew Pierre Boileau's attention.
[10] Two years later, they began writing together, with Boileau providing the plots and Narcejac the atmosphere and characterisation, not unlike Frederic Dannay and Manfred Lee ("Ellery Queen").
Boileau and Narcejac also worked as screenwriters, most notably on the adaptation of the novel Les yeux sans visage by Jean Redon into the horror movie known in English as Eyes Without a Face (1960).
Their works often flirted with the fantastic and the macabre, erupting full-blown in their novel Et mon tout est un homme (published in English as Choice Cuts) which received the Grand Prix de l’Humour Noir in 1965.
[16] The editors of World Authors, 1950-1970 wrote that Boileau-Narcejac's novels "reflect Narcejac's admiration for Simenon in their compelling use of atmosphere but have none of the scrupulous naturalism of the Maigret stories.
"[7] They also said that the duo's work "at least in translation, is stylistically undistinguished, but for most critics this fact is outweighed by the ingenuity of their plots and their power to involve the reader in the mood of doubt and mounting fear that they so skillfully evoke.
"[14] While their contemporaries in the late 1940s and 1950s were fascinated by an imaginary America, Boileau and Narcejac are credited with having helped to form an authentically French subgenre of crime fiction.
[17] They emphasized local settings and stressed the psychological dimension of coolly calculated and diabolically engineered crimes, revolving around greed, corruption, and what they called "the dark side of reason."
Robin Wood wrote about The Living and the Dead: "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.
"[20] Christopher Lloyd made a similar comment about She Who Was No More: "Many spectators and readers would probably agree that Clouzot’s film outclasses the original novel both in terms of creating horror and suspense, and in displaying an insouciant disregard for implausibilities of plot.
"[21] He also remarked: "If Boileau-Narcejac are genuine innovators in detective fiction, then, it is certainly not because of their psychological realism or sociological perspicacity, but essentially because of their reconfiguration of plot and the conflictual relations between characters.
[13] In 2023, the French television movie Adieu Vinyle, notably starring Isabelle Adjani, Grégory Fitoussi and Barbara Pravi, adapted the novel A cœur perdu, which was written by the duo.