A kiss before dying.
Series: An Inner sanctum mystery
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 1953
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 244
Subjects: Mystery; Thriller
Genres: Fiction
First sentence: 1 -
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...
Description: A Kiss Before Dying is the story of young man who has just come out of the horror of World War II and is loath to return to the quieter horror of the manufacturing town he grew up in. These two backgrounds have made him what he is: a young man on the make possessing a complete immorality in the ways he makes it.
When he meets Dorothy Kingship, who loves him deeply and whose father just happens to be the copper king of America, he has it made. But so devious is his brilliant mind and so strange is fate that it is only with her murder that he is able to reach the pinnacle in Kingship Copper.
From the first page, this novel has the kind of emotional pull that good storytellers have always evoked, You will not be able to abandon this ruthless young man. You will have to find out what he does, step by step, and what, in the end, is done to him.