French filmmakers have long been drawn to American crime writers. Jean-Jacques Beineix, Claude Chabrol, Rene Clement, Jean-Luc Godard, Bertrand Tavernier, and Francois Truffaut have made films drawn from such writers as Stanley Ellin, David Goodis, Patricia Highsmith, Ellery Queen, Jim Thompson, Lionel White, Charles Williams, and Cornell Woolrich. With the notable exception of Highsmith and Thompson, these writers primarily turned out pulp fiction, emphasizing plot over character, though the filmmakers often expanded their sources to give the resulting films greater philosophical and psychological depth.
The source of Guillaume Canet’s Tell No One is a newer generation of American crime writer. After writing several mysteries following sports agent Myron Bolitar, Harlan Coben published a darker novel in 2001 in the vein…