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 under mysterious circumstances. Why would a man with a beautiful wife, a successful movie career, and a heroic past 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.
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“This may sound like a basic thriller formula, but Kanon operates with an intelligence that briskly evokes the atmosphere of a vanished era… Kanon, a romantic at heart, makes the case that in the end honest labor, not malicious conniving, creates the magic of the movies.”
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New York Times