Second Ending - Evan Hunter

CONSTABLE & COMPANY 1956

1st EDITION

LONDON,UK

Evan Hunter is a story-teller of sensational power.

The Blackboard Jungle shook the educational systems of two hemispheres and has become a measuring rod for books on school life: Second Ending will evoke even deeper excitement, because it deals with juvenile drug addicts, and their problem is as burning in this country as in the United States.

We are concerned with a group of musical youngsters, living here and there in New York City, who devote their spare time to band practice. Their ambition is to be hired to play at weddings and other festivities, and gradually to qualify for membership of one of the smart dance bands which represent the summit of achievement to the dance mad young.

The story of this aspiring group is told on two levels. On one level, it relates current events; on the other it tells of events a few years earlier, and shows how, inevitably, they led to the present situation.

Bud Donato is studying hard for an exam, in his one-room bachelor flat. Into this room comes Andy Silvera, in the desperate throes of an attempt to break his addiction to heroin. A few years back Bud and Andy had played in the same band together, the one a pianist, the other a trumpeter of genius. Unsure of himself, unwanted at home, Andy is only happy making music with his trumpet or spending his time with Bud. When Bud had gone to war, Andy finds himself unable to face life on his own. He takes to boosting his weak self-confidence with drugs-first benzedrine, then reefers, and finally the awful paraphernalia of heroin.

This is a story of the phenomenon of addiction and the clawing torment of those who have been hooked, not so much by a drug as by the desire to escape a world in which they have failed.