Death Before Bedtime

An Edgar Box Mystery

By: Gore Vidal, Edgar Box

Narrated by: Mikael Naramore

In Death Before Bedtime, dashing P.R. man Peter Sargent is invited to the home of a venerable senator to help strategize his imminent run for president. On the night before he’s to announce, though, the senator is murdered in his bed. No longer needed as a political publicist, Sargent finds himself helping the police find the killer. He deftly navigates an eccentric cast of characters, all of whom are suspects: the rebellious daughter; the sycophantic aide; the grieving widow; and the power-hungry governor with his eye on the senator’s job. Somehow, between charming the senator’s daughter and glad-handing Washington’s elite, Sargent still manages to methodically put the pieces into place and sees that politics truly is a cut-throat business.

©1953, 2011 Gore Vidal (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved

A tale of who cares

Gore Vidal was highly prolific and ventured, with his literary talent, into all sorts of directions. In the fifties he wrote three ‘detective novels’ under the pseudonym Edgar Box. Personally, for someone as creative as he was, what a boring pseudonym, right? This is no Hammett, or Chandler, or Agatha Christie … I’ve read one of this novel and I think I’ll happily skip the other two. I very much like Vidal’s writing – but Edgar Box feels lazy, even glib. You’ll be spending time with a protagonist who’s entirely opportunistic, in a story peopled with characters you won’t care about. Some of the writing is nice, some of the dialogue snappy … but there was nothing there that got me in any way invested in the story.

On a positive note - excellent narration by Mikael Naramore - male and female characters, what a range - fun to listen to. Wonderfully done.

Amusing but dated

I read the Edgar Box series many years ago. It is satirical and but also confusing in the listening format.