A Kiss Before Dying- Summary and Analysis

A Kiss before Dying A Kiss before Dying is a novel written in 1953 by Ira Levin. It won the Edgar Award in 1954, for Best First Novel. The book was adapted twice for the cinema: first in 1956 and later in 1991. This novel summary is: Bud and Dorothy is a couple who in love happily with each other. They study at Stoddard College in Blue River. They belong together and one day Dorothy is pregnant. That is really bad time for them to have a baby this time, especially for Bud; the Bud’s future plan or dream will be uncompleted. Dorothy wants to get married: Bud doesn’t want. That means he must to leave the college and to struggle in real life and earn to family. Bud tries to persuade Dorothy to take some pills to eliminate the baby, and tells Dorothy if the pills don’t work, he will marry her. Dorothy tries the pills: they don’t work at all. Bud feel really worry because of Dorothy’s pregnancy; he may not get the good education he wants, the proper jobs he wants or he will get a poorer paid jobs. He decides he needs to kill her, Dorothy! Bud plans to kill Dorothy really carefully, and prepared what need to be prepared. But his plans fails, and he starts to get more and more desperate, since the wedding day approaches in a hurry. He tries to set everything like the Dorothy’s ‘suicide.’ On the wedding day, on the top of the building where the Marriage Bureau is, He pushes Dorothy off the edge, and it all looks like her suicide. After murder, Bud moves to Caldwell College. Bud and Ellen becomes lover and Ellen is Dorothy’s elder sister. Ellen goes to Blue River because of Dorothy’s suicide; she really wonders about her younger sister’s suicide. She wants to know obviously what really happened. She writes Bud a letter to explain the case. In Blue River, she narrows it down to two doubts which she will know later is innocent. Ellen gets to know one of the suspects that is Dwight Powell. He and Dorothy go out together, and one time she follows him home. He goes