Ira Levin

Ira Levin (born August 27, 1929 in New York) is an author of fiction thriller novels and is also a playwright and songwriter.

Levin studied at New York University, where he majored in philosophy and English. After that, he wrote training films and scripts for television. He wrote his first novel, A Kiss Before Dying, when he was 22 years old. Levin is an unusually gifted and versatile writer who is adept at thrillers and comedy. For example, he wrote the play No Time For Sergeants , which later became a popular film that launched the career of Andy Griffith.

Levin's crowning achievement as a playwright, however, is the comedy thriller Deathtrap, which is still the longest running play on Broadway. In 1982, it was made into a film starring Christopher Reeve and Michael Caine.

Ira Levin's best known novel is Rosemary's Baby, a horrifying tale of satanism and the occult. It was made into a film as was another of his novels, The Boys from Brazil. Levin wrote about real life Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele attempting to create an army of Hitler clones. This novel was even more terrifying because Levin made the idea so convincing. No less than Stephen King has described Ira Levin as "the Swiss watchmaker of suspense novels, he makes what the rest of us do look like cheap watchmakers in drugstores".

Bibliography

• A Kiss Before Dying (1952)
• Rosemary's Baby (1967)
• This Perfect Day (1970)
• The Stepford Wives (1972)
• Veronica's Room (1974)
• The Boys from Brazil (1972)
• Deathtrap (1978 play)
• Sliver (1991)