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THE STARDUST KID by Pat Richoux

THE STARDUST KID

By

Pub Date: Aug. 23rd, 1973
Publisher: Putnam

A reminiscent item of the '40's about a Bix-boy with a horn in a small Nebraska town. Sixteen year-old Mike Riley comes on like wood alcohol at a malted bar in squarish William Jennings Bryan High, where teacher Paul Kessler coaches music. A pro before his time and a veteran of a road tour with his heavy drinking musician father, Mike had returned to Mom and stability when the going got rough. And he wavers between his affair with his horn (and with Darleen -- herself a young pro with soldier boys) and Mom and the good life. But it's obvious he's forever a traveling man -- even at the close when Paul, headed toward marriage with Mom, advises her to let Mike go, and there are those last sugar-sharp blues inside: ""Nobody stopped him. Nobody called him back."" It's an old song with those golden '40's pickups -- the drinking parties, the bandstand blasts and the rendezvous with school books as camouflage. But with an indifferent and slapdash treatment of character and patois, not up to, or in time for, that last picture show.