A Kiss Before Dying

Praise for
A Kiss Before Dying
:  

‘Incomparable excitement.’
New York Times
 

‘A remarkably constructed story depicting an inconceivably vicious character in episodes of chilling horror.’
Chicago Sun Tribune
 

‘Levin is the Swiss watchmaker of the suspense novel.’ Stephen King

Praise
Title Page
Dedication
Introduction by Chelsea Cain
PART ONE: DOROTHY
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
PART TWO: ELLEN
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
PART THREE: MARION
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
About the Author
Also by Ira Levin
Copyright

I could kill Ira Levin. His first book,
A Kiss Before Dying
, was published in 1953, and was immediately embraced as a crime-thriller masterpiece. It won an Edgar Allen Poe Award for first novel. They cut down entire forests to make enough paper for all the books he sold.

You want to know how old Levin was when this masterpiece was published?
Twenty-three.

It’s not fair.

If the man had possessed any compassion, he would have languished after that, started drinking, married and divorced a few times, gained a lot of weight, and then ended his career doing Gallo wine commercials. But no, Levin had to go on to write some of the best thrillers ever written:
Rosemary’s Baby
,
The Stepford Wives
and
The Boys from Brazil
.

A Kiss Before Dying
is less fantastical (and shorter) than the more famous books that followed. Its early editions look like any other 1950s crime potboiler – twenty-five cent paperbacks with a clean-cut hunk nuzzling a shoulder-baring dame, her red lips parted, as his hand rests threateningly on her neck.

The story takes place mostly on a small-town college campus. The characters are young and full of potential. On its face, pretty standard.

Wait for it.

Levin’s plots can always be boiled down to one irresistible pitch. Mengele plans Nazi world domination and it’s up to one Jew to stop him. (
The Boys From Brazil
.) Woman is impregnated by the devil. (
Rosemary’s Baby
.) You get the picture.

A Kiss Before Dying
has a simpler hook. Worst. Boyfriend. Ever.

He’s blond-haired and blue-eyed, handsome, bright, charming and self-made. He’s also a gold-digging psychopath and narcissist. I like to think that Levin based this guy on someone he went to college with. We’ve all known him. We’ve lost jobs to him. We’ve had friends who’ve been date-raped by him. We’ve been cut off by him in traffic. He always gets away with it, doesn’t he?

I’m not giving anything away when I tell you that Levin’s guy is a killer. The book opens with his point of view (go ahead and check), and his murderous intentions are pretty screamingly apparent.

He hates women.

Lying next to his lovesick, clueless girlfriend, he can barely contain his rage at her. ‘Hate erupted and flooded through him, gripping his face with jaw-aching pressure.’ He can barely stop himself from strangling her right then and there.

What a thrill!

Didn’t you always know he was a two-faced creep? By vilifying the fifties golden boy, Levin vindicated the collective gut of a whole generation of readers. The handsome all-American dreamboat was too good to be true. One minute he’d be whispering sweet nothings in your ear, and then the next thing you knew, he was murdering you. And he wouldn’t even miss you when you were gone.

But it’s what Levin does next that showed his talent at crafting a thriller.

He switches points of view. And so the real narrative ride begins.

We know he’s a killer. We know he’s no good. We are totally on to him.

But now we’re out of his head and suddenly find ourselves surrounded by blue-eyed college golden boys. Which one is the psychopath? As anyone who’s ever found themselves in the basement of a fraternity party knows, it can be hard to tell.

It’s such a great gamble. Levin shows us his cards, and then shuffles the deck. The result is terrifying suspense every time a fair-haired fellow saunters into the room. You can’t trust anyone. And no one is safe.

Levin knew how to keep us reading. He also knew how to murder people. This man had a real gift for homicide. This book came out a half century ago, and the murder scenes are as shiver-inducing as any modern thriller. It’s the threat of violence – not the violence itself – that makes a reader sweat.

Let me tell you a little bit about me: I have liquefied a character’s brain with a knitting needle up the nostril, pierced a man’s tongue until he bled to death, jammed a glass swizzle stick into a penis and then shattered it and made someone drink drain cleaner over several days, a few teaspoons at a time. I’m not exactly adverse to a good killing.

But there are murder scenes in this book that make me tremble, lift my hand over my mouth, and say to myself, ‘That’s
terrible
.’ (By which I mean,
awesome
.) Not because they are particularly gory, but because they unfold perfectly, slowly, and even though we see what’s coming a mile away, we still can’t believe Levin actually goes through with it.

Levin’s secret? A dark wit.

His sense of humor lurks around every corner of terror and suspense – a welcome wink to break the tension and remind us that we are all just having a good time here. It is this sense of theatre that separates Levin’s books from other commercial thrillers. Levin didn’t write for critics. And he didn’t write for exercise. He wrote for readers. He never forgets that he’s supposed to be entertaining us. He’ll scare the pants off you. He’ll creep you out. He’ll give you the willies. But in the end, he’ll leave you cheering.

After all, what’s the point of murder if it’s not fun?

His plans had been running so beautifully, so goddamned beautifully, and now
she
was going to smash them all. Hate erupted and flooded through him, gripping his face with jaw-aching pressure. That was all right though; the lights were out.

And she, she kept on sobbing weakly in the dark, her cheek pressed against his bare chest, her tears and her breath burning hot. He wanted to push her away.

Finally his face relaxed. He put his arm around her and stroked her back. It was warm, or rather his hand was cold; all of him was cold, he discovered; his armpits were creeping with sweat and his legs were quivering the way they always did when things took a crazy turn and caught him helpless and unprepared. He lay still for a moment, waiting for the trembling to subside. With his free hand he drew the blanket up around her shoulders. ‘Crying isn’t going to do any good,’ he told her gently.

Obediently, she tried to stop, catching her breath in long choking gasps. She rubbed her eyes with the worn binding of the blanket. ‘It’s just – the holding it in for so long. I’ve known for days – weeks. I didn’t want to say anything until I was sure—’

His hand on her back was warmer. ‘No mistake possible?’ He spoke in a whisper, even though the house was empty.

‘No.’

‘How far?’

‘Two months almost.’ She lifted her cheek from his chest, and in the dark he could sense her eyes on him. ‘What are we going to do?’ she asked.

‘You didn’t give the doctor your right name, did you?’

‘No. He knew I was lying though. It was awful—’

‘If your father ever finds out—’

She lowered her head again and repeated the question, speaking against his chest. ‘What are we going to do?’ She waited for his answer.

He shifted his position a bit, partially to give emphasis to what he was about to say, and partially in the hope that it would encourage her to move, for her weight on his chest had become uncomfortable.

‘Listen, Dorrie,’ he said. ‘I know you want me to say we’ll get married right away – tomorrow. And I want to marry you. More than anything else in the world. I swear to God I do.’ He paused, planning his words with care. Her body, curled against his, was motionless, listening. ‘But if we marry this way, me not even meeting your father first, and then a baby comes seven months later, you know what he’d do.’

‘He couldn’t
do
anything,’ she protested. ‘I’m over eighteen. Eighteen’s all you have to be out here. What could he do?’

‘I’m not talking about an annulment or anything like that.’

‘Then what? What do you mean?’ she appealed.

‘The money,’ he said. ‘Dorrie, what kind of man is he? What did you tell me about him – him and his holy morals? Your mother makes a single slip; he finds out about it eight years later and divorces her, divorces her not caring about you and your sisters, not caring about her bad health. Well what do you think he would do to you? He’d forget you ever existed. You wouldn’t see a penny.’

‘I don’t
care
,’ she said earnestly. ‘Do you think I care?’

‘But I do, Dorrie.’ His hand began moving gently on her back again. ‘Not for me. I swear to God not for me. But for you. What will happen to us? We’ll both have to quit school; you for the baby, me to work. And what will I do? – another guy with two years’ college and no degree. What will I be? A clerk? Or an oiler in some textile mill or something?’

‘It doesn’t matter—’

‘It does! You don’t know how much it does. You’re only nineteen and you’ve had money all your life. You don’t know what it means not to have it. I do. We’d be at each other’s throats in a year.’

‘No, no, we wouldn’t!’

‘All right, we love each other so much we never argue. So where are we? In a furnished room with – with paper drapes? Eating spaghetti seven nights a week? If I saw you living that way and I knew it was my fault’ – he paused for an instant, then finished very softly – ‘I’d take out insurance and jump in front of a car.’

She began sobbing again.

He closed his eyes and spoke dreamily, intoning the words in a sedative chant. ‘I had it planned so beautifully. I would have come to New York this summer and you would have introduced me to him. I could have got him to like me. You would have told me what he’s interested in, what he likes, what he dislikes—’ He stopped short, then continued. ‘And after graduation we would have been married. Or even this summer. We could have come back here in September for our last two years. A little apartment of our own, right near the campus—’

She lifted her head from his chest. ‘What are you trying to do?’ she begged. ‘Why are you saying these things?’

‘I want you to see how beautiful, how wonderful, it could have been.’

‘I see. Do you think I don’t see?’ The sobs twisted her voice. ‘But I’m pregnant. I’m two months pregnant.’ There was silence, as though unnoticed motors had suddenly stopped. ‘Are – are you trying to get out of it? To get away? Is that what you’re trying to do?’

‘No! God no, Dorrie!’ He grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her up until her face was next to his. ‘No!’

‘Then what are you doing to me? We
have
to get married now! We don’t have any choice!’

‘We
do
have a choice, Dorrie,’ he said.

He felt her body stiffen against his.

She gave a small terrified whisper, ‘No!’ and began shaking her head violently from side to side.

‘Listen, Dorrie!’ he pleaded, hands gripping her shoulders, ‘No operation. Nothing like that.’ He caught her jaw in one hand, fingers pressing into her cheeks, holding her head rigid. ‘Listen!’ He waited until the wildness of her breathing subsided. ‘There’s a guy on campus, Hermy Godsen. His uncle owns the drugstore on University and Thirty-fourth. Hermy sells things. He could get some pills.’

He let go of her jaw. She was silent.

‘Don’t you see, baby? We’ve got to try! It means so much!’

‘Pills—’ she said gropingly, as though it were a new word.

‘We’ve got to try. It could be so wonderful.’

She shook her head in desperate confusion. ‘Oh God, I don’t know—’

He put his arms around her. ‘Baby, I
love
you. I wouldn’t let you take anything that might hurt you.’

She collapsed against him, the side of her head striking his shoulder. ‘I don’t know – I don’t know—’

He said, ‘It would be so wonderful,’ his hand caressing, ‘A little apartment of our own; no waiting for a damn landlady to go to the movies—’

Finally she said, ‘How – how do you know they would work? What if they didn’t work?’

He took a deep breath. ‘If they don’t work,’ he kissed her forehead, and her cheek, and the corner of her mouth, ‘if they don’t work we’ll get married right away and to hell with your father and Kingship Copper Incorporated. I swear we will, baby.’

He had discovered that she liked to be called ‘baby’. When he called her ‘baby’ and held her in his arms he could get her to do practically anything. He had thought about it, and decided it had something to do with the coldness she felt towards her father.

He kept kissing her gently, talking to her with warm low words, and in a while she was calm and easy.

They shared a cigarette, Dorothy holding it first to his lips and then to hers, when the pink glow of each puff would momentarily touch the feathery blonde hair and the wide brown eyes.

She turned the burning end of the cigarette towards them and moved it around and around, back and forth, painting circles and lines of vivid orange in the darkness. ‘I bet you could hypnotize someone this way,’ she said. Then she swung the cigarette slowly before his eyes. In its wan light her slim-finger hand moved sinuously. ‘You are my slave,’ she whispered, lips close to his ear. ‘You are my slave and completely in my power! You must obey my every bidding!’ She was so cute he couldn’t help smiling.

When they finished the cigarette he looked at the luminous dial of his watch. Waving his hand before her, he intoned, ‘You must get dressed. You must get dressed because it is twenty past ten and you must be back at the dorm by eleven.’