(Above) The author at 24

Written at age 22, A Kiss Before Dying's Faberge-egg plotting and inventive narrative structuring have secured its place among the top crime and suspense novels to date. With its unparalleled psychological portrait of a smooth-as-glass, collegiate sociopath anti-hero, Levin helped to cultivate one of many enduring cultural tropes — the "clean-cut serial killer."

On its publication in 1953, the New York Times' Anthony Boucher was left almost literally speechless, writing: "The hardest thing for a reviewer to write, believably and persuasively, is an all-out, no-reservations rave; and that's the problem that faces me this week as the result, of all things, of the first novel of a 23-year-old writer." He praised Kiss's "architecturally perfect plot," adding "Levin combines great talent for pure novel writing—full-bodied characterization, subtle psychological exploration, vivid evocation of locale—with strict technical whodunit tricks as dazzling as anything ever brought off by Carr, Rawson, Queen or Christie."

The book's publisher, Simon & Schuster, proclaimed it “One of the finest suspense stories ever written.”

“I do not recall a more extraordinary first mystery than this. [...] It is the whodunit raised to the level of art, a story so good that non-mystery readers do themselves a disservice if they overlook it. [...] “A Kiss Before Dying” has everything—the magic of terror-in-the-everyday, subtle prose, valid motivation and not a single far-fetched gimmick to make the story come out as intended. I envy you the evening you have ahead of you when you open to Page 1 and begin to read.”
    —Omaha World-Herald (1953)

Indeed, the novel contains one wholly-unique narrative turn which critics agree rivals any which came before it. The novel also dramatically shifts its entire POV not once, but three times, and contains myriad twists and devices that astound to this day. (Magpie Murders author Anthony Horowitz described it in 2022 as having “one of the greatest clues in a murder mystery.”)

“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 Allan 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.”
        –Chelsea Cain (2014 Introduction)

2021 Italian Edition

As Levin's 1972 The Stepford Wives would also do, Kiss set its terror in broad daylight – on leafy college campuses and the environs of summertime "Blue River" Iowa – marking one of the many sub-genres ("daylight horror") Levin would help cultivate. He used his two years of matriculation at Des Moine's Drake University as a guide in modeling fictional "Blue River," and it's equally-fictitional "Stoddard University."

Levin was drafted into the US Army just after writing the book – he had to be granted military leave to attend the awards dinner in New York where he received his "Best First Novel" Edgar Award. He wrote about these unusual circumstances in a later humorous New York Times piece.

“Those who have read Levin's “A Kiss Before Dying” have never forgotten it. It remains one of the most startling and unforgettable suspense thrillers in modern American fiction.”
        –Dale L. Walker (El Paso Herald-Post, 1988)

FUN FACTS

• The book's original title was simply "The Planner"
• The published title's been hat-tipped a surprising number of times

• 1956: Feature Film
  
• 1964: Television (U.K.)
• 1991: Film Remake