The acclaimed, bestselling author of The Good German and Los Alamos returns with his most absorbing and accomplished novel yet—a mesmerizing tale of Hollywood, postwar political intrigue, and one man's determination to learn the truth about his brother's death.
Hollywood, 1945. Ben Collier has just arrived from war-torn Europe to find his brother has died in mysterious circumstances. Why would a man with a beautiful wife, a successful movie career, and a heroic past choose to kill himself?
Ben enters the uneasy world beneath the glossy shine of the movie business, where politics and the dream factories collide and Communist witch hunts are rendering the biggest star makers vulnerable. Even here, where the devastation of Europe seems no more real than a painted movie set, the war casts long and dangerous shadows. When Ben learns troubling facts about his own family’s past and embarks on a love affair that never should have happened, he is caught in a web of deception that shakes his moral foundation to its core.
Rich with atmosphere and period detail, Stardust flawlessly blends fact and fiction into a haunting thriller evoking both the glory days of the movies and the emergence of a dark strain of American political life.
Joseph Kanon is the Edgar Award–winning author of Los Alamos and nine other novels: The Prodigal Spy, Alibi, Stardust, Istanbul Passage, Leaving Berlin, Defectors, The Accomplice, The Berlin Exchange, and The Good German, which was made into a major motion picture starring George Clooney and Cate Blanchett. Other awards include the Hammett Award of the International Association of Crime Writers and the Human Writes Award of the Anne Frank Foundation. He lives in New York City.
“Kanon operates with an intelligence that briskly evokes the atmosphere of a vanished era.”“The kind of story that demands fog and wisps of cigarette smoke, Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, elegance and bespoke tailoring cozied right up to the bloodstains and betrayal.” “Sharp prose that’s punched up by lines worthy of Bogart or Mitchum.”“Electric. . . . The dialogue is pitch-perfect, a kind of jazzy patter that feels filmic itself.”“Kanon knows his way around a good story.”“Delectable stuff.”“A delicious synthesis of menace and glamour, historical fact and rich imagination.” “Kanon’s prose is eminently noir, all cigarette smoke and magnesium flashbulbs.”“Comes within a whisker of being flawless.”
