A Kiss Before Dying (Paperback)

by Ira Levin (Author) "HIS PLANS HAD BEEN RUNNING SO BEAUTIFULLY, so goddamned beautifully, and now she was going to smash them all..." (more)
Key Phrases: neat year, Blue River, New York, Municipal Building (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"Remarkably constructed...in episodes of chilling horror." --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Description
Desperate measures don't begin to solve the problems of the student who kills a pregnant girl in this classic suspense novel. They lead instead to a multiple murder plot as compelling -- and chilling -- as it is unpredictable.

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub; Reprint edition (April 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786707283
• ISBN-13: 978-0786707287
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #492,247 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 23 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	Ryan Harvey "Wolf Shadow" (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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.

6 of 6 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)

'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.

4 of 4 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

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