Book
Stardust
First published 2009
Hollywood, 1945. Ben Collier arrives from war-torn Europe after his filmmaker brother Daniel dies in circumstances that may not have been suicide. Daniel had a successful career, a German-born wife and close ties to the community of European émigrés who had rebuilt their lives in Los Angeles. Ben remains in Hollywood to discover what his brother was doing before his death and why someone might have wanted him silenced.
His search carries him through studio politics, private fixers, refugee households and the first post-war anti-Communist investigations. Real cultural figures such as Bertolt Brecht appear at the edges of a fictional story in which the glamour of the film industry is increasingly threatened by loyalty campaigns and political accusation. The mystery of Daniel’s death becomes inseparable from the question of what wartime secrets and left-wing associations will mean in the emerging American Red Scare.
Historical Periods
Historical people
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