Moment To Moment by Alec Coppel

Alec Coppel wrote both the novel and the screenplay of his psychological thriller Moment to Moment (1966), based on his original story Laughs with a Stranger. He was also the screenwriter of Hitchcock's classic Vertigo, of which traces are here.

Kay Stanton never thinks about other men, content with her psychiatrist husband Neil and young son Timmy. Living on a hillside overlooking Cannes is not hard to take. When the American Navy is in harbour, Timmy is excited to meet the sailors and finds petty officer Mark Dominic painting in the square, inviting him to lunch. An awkward situation Kay and Mark play along with, neither interested in more than polite friendship, despite his tall good looks and piercing eyes. With Neil away in Europe, Kay spends the next few days with Mark, learning about his Greek family and driving into picturesque French villages. Kay enjoys feeling attractive, but Mark soon takes it too far, believing she will leave Neil for him. During a strong mistral windstorm, their ensuing fight leads to Mark being shot in the chest. In a panic, Kay dumps his body in a remote ditch, making it look like a robbery. The police are not fooled; they soon find and interrogate Kay, certain she was involved.

Neil returns to help the police in a case, a hospitalized American man with retrograde amnesia who cannot remember the last three weeks. The evening he is to be returned to the US, Neil tries one more experiment to restore his memory by taking him out of the hospital setting to a calm, neutral place before his flight.

I found this above average and quite well written. Leaning towards romance, this reads like the female version of Vertigo - a little less obsession but more tortured guilt at dumping a dead body. Perhaps not easily found, but a satisfying read.

This mysterious melodrama was filmed starring Jean Seberg and Honor Blackman, which amped up the histrionics. Seberg had not made a Hollywood film for several years, and it was given the lush treatment of Cannes location filming, costumes by Yves Saint Laurent, and theme by Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer.

1966 / Paperback / 192 pages