Stardust: the Novel, a Gripping yet Beautiful McCarthy Hollywood Mystery

Stardust, the latest novel by Joseph Kanon, reads like a great black and white classic movie. From the first sentence, "As it happened, Sol Lasner was also on the train," the reader is propelled in the paranoia and intrigue of Hollywood in the early McCarthy era.

Ben Collier is a young man of German descent. He returns to the States from the ruins of post World War II Germany because his brother has just attempted to commit suicide by jumping out of a window. After his brother's death, he decides to remain in California to produce a documentary on the holocaust. He also begins to investigate the suspicious circumstances around his brother's jump.

Within days, Ben is penetrating the German expat scene through his brother's widow while also rising in the ranks of the movie industry. Everywhere he turns the mystery deepens.

Kanon's heavy use of dialogue, combined with meticulously detailed scene setting, makes for a delightful visual read. At times, his sentences are almost stream of consciousness. "The mirror, some optical trick, reflected the mirror on the partly opened bathroom door. A leg, resting on the rim of the tub, just one, her hands moving up it slowly, as if she were putting on nylons, moving together toward her thigh, then out of the mirror. The hands again, the same smooth drawing up, rubbing. Not nylons, some kind of cream, maybe suntan oil. He stood there, unable to move, his eyes fixed on the mirror. A perfect leg, arched."The end result is a gripping, gorgeously written novel.

But Stardust
is not all sexy starlets and dark spies. The horrors of the holocaust are still echoing in the background, in party conversations and encounters with survivors, just as they certainly were in the minds of the characters at the time. The description of the music at the Bar Mitzvah of a Hollywood big wig summarized the collective guilt of being spared. "The first note, high and clear, wavered in the air, dropped, then rose again, a call stretching out. Ben felt his head go up, as if the note were lifting it. A second phrase without a breath, lonely, the voice its own music, but so beautiful that it filled the great room, hushing it. It hung there for a minute, a pure abstraction, and then the imagination rushed in around it, adding color and suggestion as the music began to float, a haunting stream of notes. A few heads nodded, familiar with it, but Ben couldn't move. A sadness so knowing that it felt like an actual fingertip on his heart. Not a wail, nor even a lamentation, but an endless sorrow."

From the first page to the last, I was propelled deep into the world of Stardust. I felt as if I could see each scene. And although I was gripped by the plot, desperate to make sense of all the intrigue, the Communists, the politicians, the Germans, and the warring studio heads, I was haunted by the prose long after I put the book down.

I highly recommend Stardust. It's a book that can be read on many levels, and I'm sure you'll find each enjoyable.

Stardust will be available for sale in hardcover beginning September 29.