Summary review
Louise Laurie gives a short summary of the story the book A kiss before dying tells. She mentions that she already knew after reading the first page of the book that she was going to enjoy this book. She says that Ira Levin’s writing style is superb and catching. The way Ira Levin constructs his sentences drew her right to the story line. Even though this book was published back In the 1950s It is still timeless. The quality of the writing was so good that she could actually see it all played out In her mind. The story was so well written that it made her very eager to get on and read the book. She highly recommends this book to everybody because of the superb writing and the catching story. After reading this book it will leave you wanting for more. I totally agree with Louise, I enjoyed reading this book. The story is very catching and the writing style was indeed superb. After reading the first chapter I was hooked. I also recommend this book!
Fragment 1 page 32 and 33
I choose this fragment because it illustrates how sly Bud is. There’s nothing positive about Bud, but the way he succeeds to get in the lab is absolutely brilliant. He waits for someone else to appear and pretends to be arriving at the lab at the same time. He makes it look like he was just about to get his own lab keys. Of course, the girl who arrived at the lab isn’t suspicious of anything. Bud is going to kill Dorrie by poisoning her. He needs the poison from the lab. As well as he needs gelatin capsules to put the poison in. He also made sure he had a way of transporting it: envelopes. I think his plan is absolutely brilliant.
Fragment 2 page 41
Bud had to make sure there was left no doubt about it being a suicide case. But how? Yet again Bud proves himself as a mastermind. Dorrie and Bud both take Spanish classes. He pretends to need help translation a certain sentence ‘Querido, Espero que ne perdonares pas la infelicidad que causar??. No hay ninguna otra cosa que puedo hacer’. Of course sweet Dorrie helps her boyfriend and writes down the translation on a piece of paper (Bud made sure Dorrie couldn’t write the translation on the same piece of paper). The translation: ‘Darling, I hope you will forgive me for the unhappiness that I will cause. There is nothing else I can do’. Dorrie just wrote her own suicide note with out knowing this. The note Dorrie wrote Bud sends to her sister the day before he kills her.
Fragment 3 page 67
This is the part in which the murder takes place. Bud makes Dorrie believe they’re going to get married. Bud proposes the plan to go up the roof. Dorrie is easily convinced. After being up there for a while Bud pushes Dorrie of the roof. Dorrie is absolutely horrified because she hadn’t expected this at all. She honestly loved her boyfriend and was under the impression he loved her just as much. And of course she’s scared out of her mind. Now this is done, Bud believes he successfully got rid of Dorrie and her their baby.
Fragment 4 page 236
I choose this page because this is the part where Bud gets killed. The murderer’s sad ending. He thought he got away with his crimes. He killed two sisters out of three. But the truth caught up with him. Marion found out Bud had both her sisters and she and her father take revenge. They lure him into the factory and basically ‘beat’ a confession out of him. At first Bud thinks they’re bluffing about going to kill him. But after a while he realizes they’re actually are going to do it. A murderer gets killed.
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