General information:
Ira Levin, A Kiss Before Dying, BlackBirds 1994 Wolters-Noordhoff Groningen.
The book has 218 pages and it has 3 parts (Dorothy, Ellen, Marion). Dedication: For my parents. Simon and Schuster New York first published the book in 1953.

The Title:
A Kiss Before Dying. Bud Corliss pretended to love his victims and then killed them. Love came from Dorothy and Ellen, death from Bud. But the title doesn’t really make sense, because Bud doesn’t kiss his victims just before they die. He does kiss Dorothy when they are already up at the roof.

The writer:
Ira Levin. He was born in New York in 1929. He was educated at Drake University, ‘Des Moines’, Iowa in the period 1946-1948 and studied at New York University from 1948 till 1950. He served in the Army from 1953 till 1955. Levin got married and divorced twice. He has three sons.

He has received the Edgar Allan Poe Award. A Kiss Before Dying was published in 1952. Other works by Levin are Rosemary’s Baby (1967), This perfect day (1970), The Stephord Wives (1972) and The Boys From Brazil (1976). His work is full of suspense caused by satanism, secrets, violence and death. Levin constructs his plots in such a way that both good and bad characters must, at times, change their plans because of a crisis. This is particularly the case in A Kiss Before Dying.

The place of action:
It is set in New York City and in some other places in the U.S.

Time:
The story begins in 1949 and ends in December 1951.

Characters:
Main characters:
Dorothy, Ellen and Marion Kingship: three sisters.

Dorothy Kingship: blond, brown eyes. She is very naive, believes everything Bud tells her. She is also very eager to get married and has this fantastic dream-vision of her future with Bud.

Ellen Kingship: brown hair, brown eyes. She is very curious and eager to find her sister’s killer. She also doesn’t trust anyone very quick.

Marion Kingship: brown hair, brown eyes. She is very shy; she doesn’t have much self-esteem. She never loved anyone before she met Bud. She likes art very much and argues a lot with her father.


Leo Kingship: their father, owner of the Kingship Copper Incorporation. Blond/gray, blue/gray eyes. Severe, interferes a lot with his daughter Marion’s life. He is very concerned and he doesn’t like Bud from the beginning.

Burton (Bud) Corliss: a young man involved with the three sisters. Blond, blue eyes, quite tall and handsome. Greedy, kills everybody who keeps him from getting money.

Dwight Powell: a student at Stoddard University. Blond, blue eyes, handsome. He is very honest about Dorothy. He’s also very afraid to talk about her, because he feels guilty about her suicide (he thinks she really did commit suicide).

Gordon Gant: He is a dj and a student at Stoddard University. Blond, blue eyes, very handsome. He is also very helpful and nice to Ellen by helping her with her investigation. He doesn’t always tell the truth, but he protects Ellen from his landlady by lying to her.

Other characters:
Annabelle Koch: a student at Stoddard University.
Mr. Welch: Dean of Students at Stoddard University.
Mrs. Arguette: Gordon Gant’s landlady.
Mr. Fishback: the neighbour of Mrs. Arguette.
Miss Richardson: Leo Kingship’s secretary.
Mr. Otto: the manager of a copper smelter.

The story:

Part 1: Dorothy
Bud Corliss wants a lot of money for a golden future. So he starts a relationship with Dorothy Kingship, who has a rich father; Leo Kingship: president of Kingship Copper, an enormous corporation. But then she falls pregnant and he is very angry. He pretends he loves her and makes her promise to take some pills to get rid of the baby. In a flashback it is shown that the young man (Bud) was very popular at school. After the war he had several jobs and had an affair with a rich widow. He decided to study at Stoddard University, where he met Dorothy Kingship.
He gives Dorothy the pills, promising to marry her if they don’t work. Dorothy has two elder sisters, Ellen and Marion. Their mother died a year after she and her husband were divorced. The pills do not work and they decide to get married on Friday, in three day’s time. He makes Dorothy promise not to mention the marriage to her sister Ellen. In fact Bud doesn’t want to get married and starts making plans to murder Dorothy. On Thursday he asks Dorothy to translate a Spanish line for him, which reads: ‘Darling, I hope you will forgive me for the unhappiness that I will cause. There is nothing else that I can do.’ He mails the translation, in Dorothy’s handwriting, to Ellen Kingship. Then he gives Dorothy poison pills, but she doesn’t take them. On Friday morning Dorothy is not dead. She says the pills didn’t work, but he assumes she didn’t take them. He realises that Ellen will receive the note in the afternoon and Dorothy must be dead before that time. They decided to marry right away. When they arrive at the Marriage License Bureau, it is closed. Bud knows that, but he pretends to be surprised and sorry to find it closed. He says they can spend the next half-hour on the roof of the building, which is fourteen storeys high. Then he pushes Dorothy from the building, sending her to her death. The newspapers report Dorothy’s death and say it is suicide, because of the note her sister received.


Part 2: Ellen
Mr. Kingship tells his daughter Ellen to stop blaming herself for Dorothy’s death. Ellen is not sure Dorothy committed suicide and she decides to investigate. She suddenly realises that there is a Marriage License Bureau in the Municipal Building and that Dorothy probably went there to get married. She suspects Gordon Gant and Dwight Powell, two men who might have been Dorothy’s friend. Gant says he hardly knew Dorothy, and swears he did not kill her. Ellen writes to Bud that Dwight Powell must be the man she is looking for. She doesn’t mention Gordon Gant’s name. When she find Dwight Powell, she goes out with him, telling him her name is Evelyn Kittredge. He tells her a strange story, then she really thinks he is the murderer. When he founds out her real name they talk about Dorothy and her ‘suicide’. He tells her he didn’t kill her and she believes him. He tells her that he has an address of another man in his apartment. Then Bud is in the apartment and kills Dwight. When Ellen finds Bud Corliss with Dwight’s dead body he says to her Dwight was Dorothy’s murderer and wanted to kill her too, but was killed by his own gun when Bud attacked him. Later Bud confesses to Ellen why and how he killed Dorothy. Then he shoots her behind a closed restaurant in the country. After a few months, Bud decides to contact Marion Kingship. He writes down everything he knows about her from his conversations with Dorothy and Ellen.

Part 3: Marion
When her sisters left home, Marion, who works for an advertising agency, rents an apartment and furnishes it with great care. One morning Bud Corliss rings her up, saying he has a book he borrowed from Ellen. After that they get a relationship. Her father is not happy about her relationship with Bud Corliss. Marion and Bud plan to marry in December. Bud now works for the Kingship Corporation. Gordon Gant suspect Bud. He thinks Bud killed both Dorothy and Ellen. He found out a lot of things. Then he has a lot of evidence that Bud killed them both. They (Leo Kingship, Gordon Gant and Marion) are now convinced that Bud killed Dorothy, but they have no evidence that would be accepted by the police. The following day Marion, Bud and Mr Kingship fly to one of the Corporation’s smelters. Gant accompanies them under the name of Gordon Dettweiler. When they are standing on a forty-foot-high catwalk; Kingship suddenly asks Bud how he got Dorothy to write the suicide note. Gant and Kingship confront Bud with everything they have found out. They have weakened the chain railing of the catwalk, so that it will look as if it broke by accident. Bud becomes desperate but still denies all the charges. Bud realises they want him to fall off the catwalk and to die in the same way Dorothy did. He confesses, then slips on the wet surface of the catwalk and falls into a vat of boiling liquid copper just passing beneath them.
Marion, Gant and Mr Kingship return to Kingship’s apartment where Bud’s mother is waiting for them.

Theme:
The struggle between good and bad. Good triumphs in the end.

My own opinion:
It was a lovely book to read, but it was also a lot to read (218 pages). The book appealed to me because it was thrilling and easy to read. Someone who is not involved in the plot tells the story. The writer used an all knowing storyteller, who knows what every character is thinking. Most of the plot is told in chronological order but in chapter two there is the flashback that serves to give some information about Bud Corliss. There were to scenes in the story I remember very well: 1. He pushed Dorothy from the roof and their eyes meeting. 2. How he killed Dwight en Ellen, the lie about who attacked who in Powell’s room. I think the most interesting episode is where Mr Kingship and Gant confront Bud with everything they found out. I admired Gordon Gant, because he helped Ellen very much with her investigation without even knowing her. Even after her death he kept investigating the case.