Rating: 
Summary: One of the best suspense novels outside of Cornell Woolrich!
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent beginning and middle section. Weak ending
Review: The first two parts of this book are excellent. Part One is chilling because of its depiction of what is now known as Anti-Social Personality Disorder. The fact that it was written way back in the 50's long before American Psycho's Patrick Bateman makes this even more creepy. Part One manages to put the reader in the killer's deranged little mind and even makes us cheer him on a little bit. Part Two of the book is excellent because it is completely different from Part One. It puts us in the shoes of the victim from Part One's sister as she tries to discover the identity of the killer and narrows it down to two men, but which one? It's unfortunate that Part Three is so typical after the cleverness of Parts One and Two. The ending isn't nearly as shocking as the end of Levin's later masterpiece, Rosemary's Baby but up until Part Three you'll be on the edge of your seat.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent beginning and middle section. Weak ending
Review: The first two parts of this book are excellent. Part One is chilling because of its depiction of what is now known as Anti-Social Personality Disorder. The fact that it was written way back in the 50's long before American Psycho's Patrick Bateman makes this even more creepy. Part One manages to put the reader in the killer's deranged little mind and even makes us cheer him on a little bit. Part Two of the book is excellent because it is completely different from Part One. It puts us in the shoes of the victim from Part One's sister as she tries to discover the identity of the killer and narrows it down to two men, but which one? It's unfortunate that Part Three is so typical after the cleverness of Parts One and Two. The ending isn't nearly as shocking as the end of Levin's later masterpiece, Rosemary's Baby but up until Part Three you'll be on the edge of your seat.
Rating:
Summary: Highly Enjoyable
Review: The thing that sets this book apart from other, similarly plotted stories is the way that Levin plays with our emotions concerning the murderer. For the first third of the novel, there is a small part of us that is sypathetic with this man; we almost catch ourselves hoping that he does not get caught. Several surprises later, however, and our emotions are totally flip-flopped. Now we are gived things from another persons perspective, and we can see just how monstrous this man really is. The book is very addictive (I finished it easily in two days), but the ending left me slightly unsatisfied. I would still place Levin's "Rosemary's Baby" and "The Stepford Wives" above it, but it is impressive nonetheless considering that it is one of Levin's earlier novels.
Rating:
Summary: A Brilliant First Novel
Review: This book began my love for the writing of Ira Levin. It is so stylish and damnably clever and holds up perfectly, these many years later. I have given this book to several people recently and they all have been amazed by it. So deftly plotted, the writing so assured. And even though the plot device has been ripped off ad nauseum by many lesser talents, this book still packs a helluva wallop. Bravo
Rating:
Summary: An amazingly good thriller
Review: This is one of the best books I've ever read. The characters are very real, and the description is better than if watching a movie. This book, as with all of Mr.Levin's classics, is a work of art
Rating:
Summary: A Hitchcock Movie in Words
Review: This is one of the most suspenseful, most enjoyable books I've ever read. How tired I was on 3 workday mornings because I'd stayed up late reading this book, unable to put it down - only 3 mornings because I read it all in 4 evenings. This book is too good to give away any of the plot. Reading it, I felt I was watching one of Hitchock's best movies playing in my brain. There's a point about 1/3 through the book where I stopped dumbfounded and said to myself "no way - that can't be", and then thumbed through the pages I'd just read to confirm it *was* true. An absolutely ingenious element left me feeling like I was starting from the beginning after reading 1/3 of the book. There are many other twists and surprises in this story, too, and the subject matter is surprisingly contemporary.
I can't imagine anyone not loving this book.
Rating: 
Summary: OUTDATED, VISIONARY THRILLER
Review: When this book came out in 56, it must have caused a sensation. Thinking in 50's terms, the book certainly was a great and thrilling read, but audiences are more sophisticated today, and what was probable in 56 is not so probable today, and even seems a little dumb. But, if you've managed to hold on to your innocence and haven't plowed through a thousand illogical TV and Film mysteries, you might get a kick out of this one-time great mystery which spawned copies everywhere.
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