Death Before Bedtime
Written by Gore Vidal and Edgar Box
Narrated by Mikael Naramore
3.5/5
()
About this audiobook
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.
Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal (1925–2012) was born at the United States Military Academy at West Point. His first novel, Williwaw, written when he was 19 years old and serving in the army, appeared in the spring of 1946. He wrote 23 novels, five plays, many screenplays, short stories, well over 200 essays, and a memoir.
More audiobooks from Gore Vidal
Creation: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Palimpsest: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The City and the Pillar: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Julian: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Search for the King Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gore Vidal: Sexually Speaking: Collected Sex Writings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Vidal in Venice Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Judgment of Paris Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Inventing A Nation: Washington, Adams, Jefferson Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Selected Essays of Gore Vidal Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Kalki: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5United States: Essays 1952-1992 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Messiah: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Views from a Window: Conversations with Gore Vidal Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDeath in the Fifth Position Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Smithsonian Institution: A Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLive from Golgotha: The Gospel According to Gore Vidal Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Two Sisters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Duluth: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Thieves Fall Out Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related to Death Before Bedtime
Related audiobooks
Death in the Fifth Position Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Death Likes It Hot Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Why Are We in Vietnam?: A Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStolen Away Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Duluth: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dark Green, Bright Red Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Judgment of Paris Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Live from Golgotha: The Gospel According to Gore Vidal Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Smithsonian Institution: A Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsUnited States: Essays 1952-1992 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Washington, D.C.: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Kalki: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Views from a Window: Conversations with Gore Vidal Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMessiah: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hollywood: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5J.D. Salinger: An Appreciation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Call it What You Want Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Myra Breckinridge: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/51876: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Empire: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Burr: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Main Street (Unabridged) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsImperial America: Reflections on the United States of Amnesia Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Very British Ending Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Empire of Night Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Chance Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsClouds and Eclipses: The Collected Short Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Selected Essays of Gore Vidal Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tough Guys Don't Dance: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Then Will The Great Ocean Wash Deep Above: Apollo Quartet, Book 3 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Mystery For You
The Good Girl's Guide to Murder: A Debutante Dropout Mystery Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5And Then There Were None Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Sherlock Holmes Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Listen for the Lie: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Murder on the Orient Express: A Hercule Poirot Mystery: The Official Authorized Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Unexpected Guest Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Finlay Donovan Is Killing It: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mother-Daughter Murder Night: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Murder of Roger Ackroyd: A Hercule Poirot Mystery: The Official Authorized Edition Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Death on the Nile: A Hercule Poirot Mystery: The Official Authorized Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hit and Run Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Crooked House Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5One for the Money Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fifth Suspect Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Murder Your Employer: The McMasters Guide to Homicide Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hallowe'en Party: A Hercule Poirot Mystery: The Official Authorized Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5If She Knew (A Kate Wise Mystery—Book 1) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tell No One Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5What Lies in the Woods: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Marple: Twelve New Mysteries Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The River We Remember: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Book of Extraordinary Impossible Crimes and Puzzling Deaths: The Best New Original Stories of the Genre Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Book of Lost Things Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5None of This is True: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5One for the Money: A Stephanie Plum Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Did I Kill You?: A Thriller Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Perfume: The Story of a Murderer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bad Housekeeping Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The 7 ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Still Life: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Death Before Bedtime
21 ratings3 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Gore Vidal is a wonderful writer in his own vein and every bit as good asAgatha Christie, but that’s not saying much. I got bored.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This was fun because of the lovely anachronisms and the same as usual dastardly politicians getting skewered.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The second of three mysteries that Gore Vidal wrote under the nom de plume of "Edgar Box" in the early 1950s, after The New York Times's savage review of his novel of curdled homosexuality The City and the Pillar (1948) -- and their subsequent banning of his works from their book review pages -- made a career as a novelist in the U.S. impossible and forced him to work for the movie and television studios for a decade, Death Before Bedtime is a locked room mystery with traces of the penchant for political and social satire that Vidal would later develop to better effect in his Narratives of Empire series (which includes Burr, Lincoln, Empire, and The Golden Age). The protagonist is a fair-haired PR man named Peter Cutler Sargeant II, who is something of a Mary Sue figure (Sargeant gives his residence as 120 Christopher Street in NYC, which is -- or was -- a gay neighborhood); Sargeant is hired by a ruthless senator with fascist ties and presidential ambitions who is blown up in his study the very same night that Sargeant and a small cast of suspects arrive at the senator's house to plan his run for the White House. Despite a promising start, what follows can only be described as "Vidal lite," as the worlds of far right political action groups, the political and social whirl of the Beltway, and the media conjugate in various unseemly pairings, with Sargeant and the Washington, D.C. police serving as more or less interested interlocutors who try to get to the bottom of things, if doing so doesn't take up too much effort, personal prestige, or time. Probably of interest only to fans of Vidal's acidulous prose who are curious to see his development as a writer.