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May 22
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A Kiss Before Dying
by Ira Levin
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Reviewed by Ted Fitzgerald
The justifiable lament of venerable scholars and fans of mystery fiction is
that many younger or newer readers are unfamiliar with or uninterested in
classic mysteries and their authors. Not Doyle or Christie or Hammett or
Chandler, of course, but other storytellers, prominent in their time, whose
works were seminal or significant but which have been allowed to lapse from
print, surviving copies left to turn brittle and yellow on library shelves or
mildew into pulp in damp basements. Absent the ministrations of an astute and
knowledgeable bookseller to fill in the blanks, this lack of general
availability robs the mystery novice not only of perspective but of the
opportunity to discover and enjoy really good stories that hold up decades
after they were written. And nothing is more likely to introduce a new
generation of readers to a classic than a new edition that's readily
accessible and reasonably priced.
That's why Carrol & Graf should be credited for reissuing a commendable
variety of top-notch works, ranging from fair-play whodunits to psychological
suspense to high adventure, in reasonably priced mass market paperback
editions. Among the gems resuscitated by the publisher in the past several
years have been Margaret Millar's "How Like an Angel" and "Beast in View," Joel
Townsley Rogers' "The Red Right Hand," William P. McGivern's "Odds Against
Tomorrow," Whit Masterson's "Touch of Evil," as well as early works by Donald
Westlake, Lawrence Block, Anthony Boucher, Charles Willeford, Margery
Allingham, Sandra Scoppettone, Fredric Brown and John Dickson Carr.
The latest reissue is Ira Levin's "A Kiss Before Dying," which created a
sensation when it was first published in 1953 and won the then-24 year old
author a deserved Edgar for Best First Novel. This serpentine tale of an
upwardly mobile sociopath's clever dispatch of his wealthy pregnant
girlfriend, her sister's attempt to effect justice, its surprising
consequence and repercussions, relies (as a number of first rate books of the
era did) on a clever narrative structure which plays with readers'
expectations.
But "Kiss" is still a stunner after almost a half-century because Levin didn't
count solely on the mechanics. The book's dark mood and use of madness,
vengeance and subterfuge match the best of Cornell Woolrich as it moves
forward with a seemingly inevitable momentum. Most important, the main
characters are not pawns to the plot. Instead, they engage the reader,
evoking interest and sympathy, engendering a desire to see things through to
the end.
And the end for each resolute character, good or evil, carries unexpected
emotional weight. No one who dies here
Do you like Ira Levin's other classic suspense novels such as "The
Stepford Wives," "The Boys from Brazil," "Rosemary's Baby," or "Sliver"?
Join the discussion on:
Ira Levin >>
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perishes simply to accommodate the plot; each death has an impact on the other characters and on the reader. For
that reason, in a book filled with surprises, the most troubling one may be
the reader's reaction to its final lines. And while fashion, technology and
social attitudes place the story firmly in the 1950s, "A Kiss Before Dying"
dates not at all. It's still fresh, exciting and disturbing. It's even
prescient: The narcissistic killer obsessed by status and wealth, who uses
personal relationships to advance and justify a self-created success fantasy,
may have been a bogeyman under the bed in 1953, but is unfortunately an all
too familiar figure today.
The Drood Review of Mystery features reviews of
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