Death Before Bedtime

Peter Cutler Sargent II #2

by Edgar Box

In Death Before Bedtime, 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.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Crime, Thriller, American

213 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1953

About the author

Pseudynom of Gore Vidal.

Reviews

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Would you like to know something I don't care about? No? Well I'll tell you anyway. I didn't care, nor care now that I'm done with the book, who killed the Senator in this book. I just didn't find myself giving a shit who was the murderer. That's not the attitude I should have had reading this book but it's true, I just didn't care. The whole mystery, who-dunnit, part of the novel bored me. Not caring it was difficult to want to keep reading.

This is an Agatha Christie style murder mystery, with someone dying and all of the people in the house at the time being suspects. The cast of characters is made up of Washington DC high society types, circa early 1950's and if it weren't for Gore Vidal's charming and witty writing style the whole book would have been a totally painful experience. Instead there are some great moments of interaction between characters as they are all trapped in the house together as the crime is solved. At the book's best it is like Proust's party scenes without the long tangential expositions. The buffoonery and pretensions of political society are skewed mercilessly by Vidal and when the focus is off of the tedious murder mystery the book is very very enjoyable.

While the book is short I kept thinking that Vidal was probably being paid by the word for this book, and I imagine the reason he wrote these mystery novels in the early 50's was for money. Or maybe I'm just being cynical and the drawn out mystery parts are what mystery readers would call delightful red herrings, to me they are just annoying deceptions.

This book has recently been reissued by Vintage on their crime imprint. The reissue has a pretty snazzy cover and a new introduction written by Vidal. I didn't read the new edition and I'd be curious to read Vidal's introduction or maybe just do some wikipedia research to find out the reasons why Vidal chose to write these novels under the pseudonym Edgar Box in the very early days of his writing career. I'm fairly sure it was all for the money but his tart style still shows up and I'd say is the real reason that people should give this book a chance.

Four stars for the really good dialog and observations, two stars for the mystery side of the story that didn't do anything for me equals a solid three stars for this book.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

While reading this second entry in Vidal's Edgar Box series, I was feeling a preference for Book #1. But there's a specific reason for that. Vidal (Box) had set 'Death in the Fifth Position' in the very unlikely world of ballet. Something about a murder mystery among classical dancers was inherently funny and, refreshingly, there was little attempt to shy away from what was also marginally camp about it.

At the same time, the book was structurally sound as a murder case, proving that 'Box' could deliver the genre goods.

'DBB' is a decidedly different story but ultimately it is no less satisfying. Gone are the effervescent types that populate the theater and dance worlds (so the book is not nearly as entertaining in terms of humor) and in their place are the staid, stuffy denizens of Washington DC. Vidal, of course, knew the worlds of both theater and (esp.) politics intimately:

...except it would not be easy to get anything out of her; she was too used to the world of politics, of secrecy and deals to be caught in an indiscretion.

~but the reader can't help wishing this second book in the series featured a cast of characters less... drippy.

But that's politics - as we know full well when following the current (and still standard) State of Things:

This country is run on one set of principles while pretending to another.

- and as Vidal revealed much more adroitly (and seriously) in his play / film 'The Best Man'.

(There's some delightful consolation in the fact that one major character is artfully libidinous. That at least shakes up the dullness of most of the other personalities.)

If 'DBB' is less 'fun', however, it's still a cracking-good read. In the Christie fashion of the previous entry, just about everyone is a murder suspect and 'Box' certainly knows how to keep things weaving and whirling up to the moment when 'all is revealed'.

What Vidal brings to the world of murder is a welcome intelligence - as well as the sense that the writer, even in a more somber setting, is having a rollicking time keeping us on the pins and needles he has placed on our seats.

[Darwin8u · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fizzled pretty fast. Wanted to like it (resembled a typical "cozy" detective fiction), but both the cozy atmosphere and the thread broke-down.

[Bev · Rating 3 out of 5]

Death Before Bedtime (1953) is the second of three mystery novels written by Gore Vidal under the name of Edgar Box. After his novel The City and the Pillar (1948) which featured descriptions of homosexuality that caused him to be blacklisted by The New York Times, Vidal donned the Box pseudonym and used it to produce the three novels for cold, hard cash. His series stars Peter Cutler Sargeant III, a publicity man turned amateur detective when his business lands him in the middle of three murder cases.

Death Before Bedtime is modeled after the Golden Age penchant for country house murders but has a very political twist. It is set at the lavish Washington DC home of a conservative Midwestern Senator. Senator Leander Rhodes decides to make a bid for the White House and hires Sargeant to handle his publicity--starting with his announcement to run which is planned to occur during his speech before the National Margarine Council. Sargeant meets the Senator for the first time, sits down for dinner with the Senator and a houseful of guests, has a cozy little chat with Rhodes about getting the campaign wagons rolling, toddles off to bed after a nightcap and another cozy chat with one of the ladies staying for the week, and is prevented from going to sleep by a house-shaking explosion. The Senator has been blown up by explosives hidden in his fireplace.

As far as the police are concerned, the logical culprit is Roger Pomeroy who is vitally concerned with a brand-new, top-secret explosive. But then the Senator's secretary is found dead from an apparent suicide and papers are found that implicate him in some nefarious doings. Again, the police are all set to wrap the case up and call it a day. But Sargeant is not convinced that it was suicide and decides to do a little sleuthing on his own. He plays detective and starts interviewing all of the members of the household and the guests. But what he discovers doesn't make him particularly happy and he's ready to let the police have their way. Until the murderer decides Sargeant has been just a little bit too nosy and tries to arrange another suicide....now it's personal and Sargeant won't rest till he's able to hand the murderer over to The Lieutenant.

Gore Vidal is no Agatha Christie. The plot is adequate. The characters are relatively fine. The setting is okay too. But there's no pizazz. There's nothing special to grab the mystery reader's attention. And honestly, I didn't much care for Sargeant's on-again, off-again approach to amateur sleuthing. He's all about showing up the Lieutenant when he first decides it's murder and the police have it all wrong. Then he decides, Nah, I'm not so into sleuthing after all. I'll let the cops think the wrong guy killed the Senator and then killed himself. Then he's all hot to sleuth again when the murderer tries to knock him off. Not exactly the ideal detective for a county house style mystery.

I realize that Vidal whipped these stories out pretty quickly. So, given that, it's really not a bad mystery at all and a decent day's read...which is how long it took me.

First posted on my blog My Reader's Block. Please request permission before reposting. Thanks.

[Dave]

The solution suggested to him by a friendly publisher was to write crime fiction under a pseudonym -Edgar Box- and Vidal quickly (he claims eight days each) penned three crime novels, all set around the New York City are “Death in the Fifth Position” (1952), “Death before Bedtime” (1953), and “Death Likes it Hot” (1954), featuring Peter Cutler Sargeant II, a publicist turned private eye. Sargeant is a stand-in for the traditional private eye. He gets involved with murder, but he has no official role, other than being involved.

This is perhaps the least enjoyable of the three. The setting here is Senator Rhodes’ house in Washington D.C. The senator has hired Sargent in preparation for his aspiring presidential campaign. A bevy of other guests also arrive to spend the weekend with the senator, including his daughter Ellen who Sargent was briefly secretly once engaged to and meets on the train heading to D.C. for an impromptu rendezvous. Ellen, for fun, tells her parents that Sargent and her are currently engaged, though, leading to a bit of awkwardness as the Senator has just hired Sargent.

The Senator though has a bit part in this novel as he is quite quickly blown to smithereens by an explosive added to the fireplace in his den. The police detective Winters sizes up the situation and announces that all the houseguests are proper suspects and they are not to leave the house (without special permission) let alone the city.

What follows then is a sort of hotel in the Catskills mystery but here the isolated hotel is a mansion in the heart of the city. Various family secrets are spilled. There are beneficiaries to the will who did not even know his connected they were with the Senator. There are secret contracts sent surreptitiously. There are regular musical beds and finger pointing.

Sargent manages at the end to solve the puzzle which the local police had been unable to pierce. Indeed, he lays out his logic step by step to the guilty party.

[Lisa Kucharski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well Box (Gore Vidal) really upped the ante on the murder this time. Peter Sargent has taken on a politician as a client- who intends to get his party's presidential nomination. There is no holding back to the observations of ego, bluster, greed and cunning of the inhabitants of Washington D.C. There is also a side situation where we see Sargent resolve a separate publicity situation which is actually delightful.

A real guessing game, and you have to keep you eyes and mind open to figure out the killer. My fave of the three mysteries by this author- I've got one more to go. Really wish there were more mysteries by Box.

[Nooilforpacifists · Rating 5 out of 5]

By God, Gore Vidal hated women! That aside, this Agatha Christie-like short work shows him at his best--writing about the Washington he knew from his Grandfather Senator Gore and step-father Hugh Auchincloss. Vidal "wrote what he knew", and he knew it well. But one of the things he believed he knew even then was that women were evil; temptresses; villains.

[Charlie Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was the second of three mysteries Gore Vidal wrote under the pen name Edgar Box.

Here's the thing; Vidal was an insufferable egotist, and one can BARELY make it through the self-serving introduction to the actual mystery.

I did. The mystery was okay. It was relatively easy to figure out who the killer was, although the WHY was supplied by deus ex machina NOT given foundation earlier in the novel.

And, wow, Vidal was a misogynist (as well as a homophobe) and classist snob. He really didn't seem to like much of anyone, other than himself --- or, so he thought and pretended, but, no one can be as nasty about others as was he, without feeling the same sort of distrust and contempt for himself.

Sad. Imagine what he might have written had he not been so busy feeling ignored and victimized and not adequately appreciated and heralded.

[Philip · Rating 3 out of 5]

The second of Gore Vidal's pseudonymous "Edgar Box" mysteries from the 1950s, this one's set in Washington DC and concerns the murder of a senator who happens to be the father of a high-living young woman the narrator, Peter Sargent, was briefly engaged to. Sargent (the narrator of DEATH IN THE FIFTH POSITION) is a public relations man, and the senator was his newest client - for one day.

One can only wonder what critics and readers in the 1950s thought of the novels political and social observations, not knowing they belonged to none other than Gore Vidal. And at least three characters have sex - or the possibility of sex - on their minds - a lot! At one point Sargent inadvertently interrupts the senator's daughter and a young reporter: "He was blushing furiously and I could see that my ex-fiancé had aroused him. Embarrassed he trotted into the bathroom and slammed the door behind him."

9/10: A light, fun read: Vidal no doubt had pseudonymous fun sending up the Washington folk he was becoming acquainted with thanks to his association with the Bouviers and the Kennedys.

[Andrew Pender-Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

‘DEATH BEFORE BEDTIME’ by Edgar Box is a deftly told, but not particularly remarkable mystery story, featuring amateur detective Peter Sargeant. Peter Sargeant appears in a number of Edgar boxes mysteries. In this one he has been hired to handle public relations for Senator Leander Rhodes' presidential campaign. The problem is that it is barely within twenty-four hours of Peter Sargeant moving into the palatial home of Senator Rhodes that the senator is brutally, and dramatically, murdered. The major questions are: who murdered him, and why? Was he murdered by someone who disliked his right-wing politics or by an individual or group who had a more personal vendetta against him? Peter Sargeant sets out to discover the answer and, in the process, nearly loses his own life. By the time the murderer is uncovered, the senator is not the only one dead and a number of people have been viewed as prime suspects.

‘DEATH BEFORE BEDTIME' is a light read helped by a few highly entertaining characters such as Senator Rhodes’ wayward daughter, a career politician with an intriguing past, and a society hostess perpetually eager for gossip and the limelight. It is they, more than anything else, who give this book a lift.

[Ron Kerrigan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this second Peter Sargeant tale more than the first, possibly because I liked the political machinations more than the twists and turns of the ballet. Although a Cast of Characters would have helped (as well as a crime map of the Senator's Washington DC home), the -- maybe a bit too longish -- plot is well presented and the culprit was a surprise. Mostly it takes place within the house as publicity man Peter is privy to various family connections hidden from the police. The dialogue and Peter's inner thoughts are witty and keep the story on track.

P.S. Written in the early 1950's, it appears the author was discerningly prescient about what the US is dealing with in 2025. One of the characters has come to DC to interview the Senator -- who hopes to be given the nod as Presidential candidate. He describes him thus: "He is a buffoon; an old-fashioned, narrow-minded, demagogue always talking about Americanism." He also tells us that the list of names of people supporting him for President includes "every fascist in the country." Hmmm. Lucky for 1950's America, the Senator was the murder victim here.

[Glen U · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Death Before Bedtime" is Gore Vidal's second in a series of detective novels written in the 1950's during his "black list" days. After The New York Times refused to review "The City and the Pillar" and any subsequent book that Vidal wrote, his publisher recommended using a psuedonym, and thus, Edgar Box was born. Taking a page from Mickey Spillane, Vidal created a hetero-sexual hero who's attitude towards women was not quite the hard core tough, like Mike Hammer, but a more sophisticated personage, yet still one who delighted in the charms of women, both physically and mentally. Vidal's mysteries still made some allusions to same-sex sex, but nothing blatant. Filled with the satire that Vidal incorporated within his "literary" books, they are an enjoyable read, but they are not exemplary in the annals of mystery writing. A good writer will always produce a good product, no matter the genre. A good read, both for their historical novelty and for the pure pleasure of a fine mystery.

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Michael Ritchie · Rating 3 out of 5]

The second Peter Sargeant mystery from Edgar Box (Gore Vidal). This one, set in high political circles in Washington, isn't as compelling as the first one. Though I suspect Vidal was a political animal, he seemed more comfortable in the ballet milieu. Still, the mystery works and I like that he was developing a specific style for these mysteries--the snarky tone of the character, the fact that the murders take place off stage, so to speak. I wouldn't mind seeing Peter as the lead in a streaming series; his career as a PR person would make him fit right in with today's marketers and influencers, etc.

[Helen Campbell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Once again, in the style of Agatha Christie, Peter Cutler Sargent II, a New York public relations agent attends a house party and one of the guests meets an untimely death. But how could she have been murdered when a number of guests, including Sargent, witness her drowning in the ocean off the coast of Long Island? A classic who-dunnit novel that will keep you guessing while entertaining you with Sargent's antics. This is the third, and final, novel that Gore Vidal wrote under the name, Edgar Box.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gore Vidal, blacklisted for writing about homosexuality, released three mystery novels under the name Edgar Box int he 1950s. They were very successful financially. Artistically? They're about average on the mystery level but filled with Vidal's sharp and engaging writing. He could have had a successful side hustle with many, many books like these. There's a reason why, though, they aren't as well remembered as Agatha Christie or even Rex Stout's books, even if they're technically written better: the heart isn't truly in it. That said, it's a fun read.

[Glenn Hopp · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first chapter is so good (clever, witty, frank in its sexuality for a book written in 1953) that the rest of the novel probably cannot maintain that level, and it doesn’t. The middle chapters sag a bit in their witty, political gossip, but the method of murder (which I’m not giving away) is brilliant.

[Andy Newton · Rating 5 out of 5]

A witty, briskly paced whodunnit broadly in the style of Agatha Christie, set in the cynical, unfeeling 1950s D.C. social scene. The novel has an entertaining proto-sexual-revolution-by-way-of-Playboy-magazine quality to it. I could easily envision Cary Grant or James Garner playing Peter Sargent in dazzling Technicolor.

[Gary Allen, PhD · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good ‘film noir’ type of mystery. Interesting, funny, and just a joy to read. I realize Gore Vidal achieved higher literary goals but these books are still a credit to him. Nothing his contemporaries like Truman Capote could ever pull off.

[Ben · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decent little crime mystery story. Yes there are others out there that are significantly better but it’s an interesting look into the style and tropes of this kind of story, especially one released around this time period. I’m always a sucker for a femme fatale character as well (I can fix her)

[T. Rhodes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sharp, witty, full of intrigue. Gore Vidal can do no wrong.

[G. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Witty & erudite. A wonderful romp thru Washington. The names may change but the character types stay the same.

[Scot · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the second of the three Edgar Box mystery novels, and it was published in 1953. It follows the same basic plot structure of the first novel, with a lot of different characters presented as possibilities for who committed the murder—which in this case happened to an elderly Senator in DC who hails from a family steeped in money and generations of political power. Since Edgar Box is a pseudonym for Gore Vidal, and Gore Vidal actually had such a powerful, elderly senator for a grandfather as he grew up in DC, seeing his insider’s caustic appraisal of Washington society, backroom politicking, and money corruption at work is one of the more appealing aspects of the book. The detective hero in all three Edgar Box mysteries is Peter Cutler Sergeant III, a debonair, witty and strikingly handsome public relations man who went to Ivy League schools, comes from a family with high connections, and is obviously based on Vidal’s idealized (and hetero-ized) perception of himself.

[Paul Jackson · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Edgar Box trilogy is a fun read. The detective novels were written by the great Gore Vidal under an alias due to being blackballed by a homophobic book critic. Reading about the womanizing Peter Sargent with that fact in mind, adds an extra level of enjoyment to Gore's books.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was fun because of the lovely anachronisms and the same as usual dastardly politicians getting skewered.

[Tom Ratliff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Second of Edgar Box (Gore Vidal) mysteries...same format of catty reporter breaking the case of murder. Easy fun read with lots of quips.

[Katherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Series #2. iBook, own.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

Always interesting when a literary novelist tries his hand at Murder. A "house mystery" reminiscent of Ten little Indians but Mr. Box mercifully stops it at two and a half.

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm glad Gore (Vidal) moved on from his Box days, but this murder mystery was still entertaining, and prefigures TV's "Scandal" in many ways.

[N N · Rating 1 out of 5]

Unreadable junk.