A KISS BEFORE DYING

By lra Levin

CHARACTER DESCRIPTION

Dorothy

She is a 19-year-old student from Stoddard College. She is a rich girl who has two sisters,
named Ellen and Marion and she is the youngest. She seems to be insecure, but very nice. She
is also naive and unaware of what is going on around her. She also seems to be a possessive
person, because her early life was hard for her and her two sisters. Dorothy’s parents got
divorced, when she was just about eight years old. After the divorce, their mother fell ill and
died. Her father Leo was not a kind, loving father.

She does well at school but she is a little ignorant of reality, and how things work. She
thinks everything will fix by itself; for example, her pregnancy. She also thinks that getting
married and established is important. But she is eventually killed by Bud, the man who she loves
and pretends to love her.

Burton ‘BUD’ Corliss

He is a 24-year-old young man, is very handsome and good-looking. His early life was
not easy. He was born in the little town of Menasset, near Fall River, Massachusetts. His parents
were very poor. His mother hated her husband because he never had a good job. Bud becomes
the most important person in Dorothy´s life. His father is dead now, and his mother is still
interested in his welfare. At the age of 18 he starts to think that all women are like his mother.
Lots of women get interested in him, but not for a long time so he starts to hate women. Still
he is still happy to spend their money. He was Dorothy’s, and later Ellen’s, boyfriend.

He is an honour student, a war hero, a smart beautiful man that all young ladies fall for
and the boy that all mothers would have loved to have as a son-in-law. Popular and liked by
everyone, deep inside he is not a good man.

He goes through his life always choosing the easiest solutions and wants to make money
on an easy way, like getting them from a father-in-law. To achieve his goal, he even kills three
people. He pretends to be lovely and trustworthy but he is mean and greedy. He is a murderer
and psychopath who kills people without feeling regret.

Ellen Kingship

She is Dorothy’s sister, the middle sister of the Kingship family. She studies at Caldwell
College, in the state of Wisconsin. She is different from her sister, she is adventurous and likes
taking risks. She does not believe that her sister committed suicide so she dares to travel to Blue
River to chase her sister´s murderer. She is very clever, because she manages to find out that
Dorothy has been murdered but she is a little reckless. She investigated her sister´s murder
oblivious of what could happen to her. Thus, she is also killed by Bud.

Marion Kingship

The third sister was a student at Columbia University but then she got a job in an
advertising agency. She is different from the other two. She is the most intellectual, the most
mature and the wiser of the three sisters. She enjoys going to museums and exhibitions. She is
not particularly beautiful as Ellen or Dorothy but she is smarter and more cautious than her
sisters. She is very shy and does not have much self-esteem. She has never fallen in love before
she meets Bud Corlis, but she is the one who finally clarifies the three murders together with
Gordon Grant.

Leo Kingship

He is the father of the three sisters. He seems to be a hard man, because he never
forgives people, if he thinks that they have done something wrong. He is a very busy rich
businessman who owns a big company which produces copper. His wife died after they got
divorced.

He does not seem to be much interested or involved in his daughters´ lives but helps
uncover his two daughters´ murders.

Gordon Gant

He is a fine handsome blond English-student. He is very busy because he is the disc

jockey in Blue River’s radio program but he gets involved in the murders and helps Marion solve
them.

Dwight Powell

He is a pleasant quiet student at Stoddard University, who is in Dorothy´s English class

and becomes her boyfriend for two months. He is one of Ellen’s suspects but he is killed trying
to help her solve her sister´s murder.