[In "Second Ending" there] is nothing stereotyped or simply sensational in Hunter's portrait of the trumpet player Andy Sivera. It is a very human and moving achievement. When he comes for aid to the apartment of his old jazz band associate Bud Donato, who is now boning up for examinations at the College of the City of New York, the trumpeter talks of curing himself by the agonizing method he knows as "cold turkey" (stopping at once, no tapering off). Hunter almost immediately manages to suggest that this is very unlikely in Silvera's case. It proves all of that, despite the efforts of that harassed college boy and of two young women, one of whom has herself conquered heroin. The account of Sivera's final descent is extremely dramatic, and Hunter intersperses long flashbacks revealing the past history of his characters.

His success with his chilling themes is all...