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Stardust (2009)

by Joseph Kanon(Favorite Author)

3.37 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0743597931 (ISBN13: 9780743597937)

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

Simon & Schuster Audio

review 1: If TCM ever makes its own non-documentary film, here's the prototype: a vivid, juicy,atmospheric murder mystery, set in post WWII Hollywood, just as the Red Scare began to raise its ugly head and make Hollywood prove its patriotism.Kanon is strong at setting and characterization;his staccato,"just the facts,maam" dialogue is noir enough for the times and almost reads like a screenplay in waiting. He has fun with mixing real-life stars and studio-chieftains with his own fictional ones(my favorite is Sol Lasner, head of imaginary Continental Pictures who has one of the best scenes in the novel when he is subpoenaed to talk at a hearing by a smarmy McCarthy-clone congressman....worth all the plot twists, turns and confusion just for the pay off confrontation). Kanon does fal... morel prey to the love of his own quit wit by tangling the knots of the plot into almost impossible- to- follow strands (by book's end I wasn't really sure what was done by whom and why it mattered), but the recreation of '40s mega- watt star-power Hollywood universe kept me going.How can you not like a novel that include the vivacious, real-life Paulette Goddard (post Charlie Chaplin, and giggling wickedly about the jewelry her settlement bought), and invents a studio power-broker named Bunny ("as in quick as a..") Jenkins, former precocious child star who outgrew his cuteness and lost his hair but learned the the rules of corporate manipulation as rapidly as he used to learn his lines? If you are a fan of tinsel town in its prime, this is probably a safe bet for a good read.
review 2: Thoroughly enjoyable mystery set in post-World War II Hollywood. You get some noir, some love story, some Hollywood glitter, as well as the good-for-your-brain "history" of the German emigre experience and the horrors of the early HUAC (or at least a fictional version of the HUAC). I occasionally felt like Ben (our gumshoe hero) gets his clues handed to him a little too easily, but there are still plenty of twists and turns. And a slimy senator gets his comeuppance from a studio head—which does read exactly like a scene from a movie, but it stirs up the righteous indignation like few things can. Recommended. less

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