A Kiss Before Dying [Paperback]

Ira Levin (Author), Otto Penzler (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 2003

A Kiss Before Dying not only debuted the talent of best-selling novelist Ira Levin to rave reviews, it also set a new standard in the art of mystery and suspense. Now a modern classic, as gripping in its tautly plotted action as it is penetrating in its exploration of a criminal mind, it tells the shocking tale of a young man who will stop at nothing—not even murder—to get where he wants to go. For he has dreams; plans. He also has charm, good looks, sex appeal, intelligence. And he has a problem. Her name is Dorothy; she loves him, and she's pregnant. The solution may demand desperate measures. But, then, he looks like the kind of guy who could get away with murder. Compellingly, step by determined step, the novel follows this young man in his execution of one plan he had neither dreamed nor foreseen. Nor does he foresee how inexorably he will be enmeshed in the consequences of his own extreme deed.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Remarkably constructed...in episodes of chilling horror."

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf (April 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786711647
• ISBN-13: 978-0786711642
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #963,273 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best suspense novels outside of Cornell Woolrich!, March 31, 2004

By 

Claude Avary "West Coast Reader" (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Kiss Before Dying (Paperback)

Stephen King once commented about author Ira Levin: "Every novel he has ever written has been a marvel of plotting. He is the Swiss watchmaker of the suspense novel; he makes what the rest of us do look like those five-dollar watches you can buy in the discount drug stores." He went on to lament that Levin's most effective book (and his first!), "A Kiss before Dying," is not much read these days.

Here's your chance to fix this situation! "A Kiss before Dying" is now back in print, in a nice trade paperback, for the first time since the early 90s (when a mass-market paperback was briefly available to tie-in with the forgotten movie adaptation starring Sean Young and Matt Dillon). First published in 1953 when Levin was only twenty-three, "A Kiss before Dying" is one of the most remarkable suspense novels ever penned and a masterpiece of literary noir. The greatest suspense writer of all time, Cornell Woolrich, highly influenced Levin, and this book seems like an overt homage to many of Woolrich's devices. It's the only suspense novel I know of that honestly compares with the master.

To tell much about the plot would ruin the shocks and surprises awaiting you in these pages. Levin hurls out plot twists that genuinely jolt the reader and turn the whole story upside down in moments (King referred to one of the twists as "a real screeching bombsell" of a surprise). The story begins at a large college, where Dorothy Kingship, daughter of a wealthy industrialist, has learned that she is pregnant. Her boyfriend, a handsome, dashing, but callous, calculating, and completely amoral young man is unhappy with the news; he hoped to marry into the rich family as his quick ticket to success, and the uptight Leo Kingship will certainly disinherit his daughter when he finds out about the pregnancy. Dorothy wants to marry right away, not caring if her father cuts her off or not, but her boyfriend starts secretly devising another plan...if only he can make it look like suicide...

And that's merely the beginning. The book takes so many u-turns and switchbacks that you'll spend most of your time reading it shaking with tension. Levin crafts his three central set-pieces using minute detail that makes for agonizing suspense. He lets the reader in on the secrets of the story bit by bit, but the more you know, the tenser the story becomes. Sometimes, you know the WHAT and WHO of a situation, but not the WHEN or HOW. At other times, you know the WHAT and WHEN but not WHO. Levin will drive you nearly mad in places! King is right: Levin's plotting is so ingenious it's like workings of a perfect machine.

But beyond plot machinery, Levin dazzles in another area: characterizations. Like Woolrich, Levin can create haunting portraits of lonely souls, and frightening sketches of soulless killers. "A Kiss before Dying" is pure noir: a world of sad people aching for real love and of people who find that killing is no more difficult than putting on a jacket. This is not a "snack food" suspense novel like you find sitting on bestseller shelves. This is a novel that will stay with you for a long time.

It's unfortunate that Levin has written so few novels since (he didn't write his second novel, "Rosemary's Baby" until fourteen years later; he spent the time between as a writer for TV and Broadway stage). Everything he has written is worth reading (check out "The Stepford Wives," "The Boys from Brazil," "Sliver," and his hit play "Deathtrap"), but "A Kiss before Dying" is his art at its best. Don't miss it.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars full of suspense, not dated at all, August 25, 2001

By 

Linda Oskam "dutch-traveller" (Amsterdam Netherlands) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Kiss Before Dying (Paperback)

'A kiss before dying' was written in the fifties, and apart from some very non-essential aspects it is not dated at all. The book is about a young college student from a poor family who wants to marry a rich girl and for that he is prepared to do practically everything. Until she meets the wrong person, who starts digging... There are some very ingenious turns in the book, so telling more about the story would only give it all away. I can only say Read it! It is definitely worth your time.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Much, much better than the movie, May 10, 2000

By 

Anne M. Marble "Anne" (MD, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Kiss Before Dying (Paperback)

Do you know how most books save their big surprise for the end? This one fools ya -- there are a couple of big surprises sprinkled at the most, well, surprising places in the book. I won't tell you where they are -- that would be cheating.

Besides the surprises, this one has plenty of suspense and interesting characters. Even the villain is memorable, and in many ways, understandable.

Anne M. Marble Reviewer, All About Romance