Catherine Arley

Pierrette Henriette Denise Marthe Pernot (20 December 1922 – 25 July 2016), better known professionally as Catherine Arley, was a French novelist and actress.

After high school, Catherine Arley joined the National Conservatory of Dramatic Arts of Paris. She played in street theatre and in some films, taking part in the French production of Fleuve étincelant (The Flashing Stream) by Charles Langbridge Morgan. She gave up her acting career after her marriage and at the same time as her first novel, Tu vas mourir, appeared in the 1953 Éditions Denoël collection "Oscar" edited by Marcel Duhamel. Despite this encouraging welcome, her second novel, La Femme de paille, a story of fraudulent adoption, was rejected by every French publisher to whom she offered it. She then looked abroad for a publisher and her novel was eventually published in Switzerland in 1954, then translated into twenty-four languages, and filmed by Basil Dearden starring Gina Lollobrigida and Sean Connery. This international fame still did not help her to find a French publisher. From 1962 to 1972, she only published three novels: Le Talion (1962), Les Beaux Messieurs font comme ça (1968), which won an international prize for suspense, and Les Valets d'épée (1968).