Wallace and Halperin present a compelling case that Kurt Cobain was murdered by his not so loving wife, Courtney Love. I tried to read this book cynically since I actually like Courtney Love (for what unfathomable reason, I don’t know.) I also didn’t want to jump unthinkingly onto the conspiracy bandwagon, however fun that might be. Conspiracy theories abound when celebrities die young and most of them are untrue. (Except that Elvis really does run a donut shop in Arkansas. Really.)

I started out taking the time to come up with logical explanations for each piece of damning evidence, but by the half way point of the book there were so many “coincidences” to explain that it made more sense to let them fit together sensibly than go on denying the murder. It was getting to the point where I was grasping, “Ok, maybe aliens came down and shuffled the space/time continuum.” A series of increasingly bizarre events would have had to transpire for this to have been a suicide. But if it was a murder, everyone behaved normally and the universe was operating within its usual parameters. In the end, even my last respite, “Courtney is a crazy woman on drugs and had no idea what she was saying,” makes less sense than that she was a crazy woman on drugs and knew exactly what she had just done.

This book is an intense, engrossing read whether you’re interested in either of the Cobains or not. Wallace and Halperin work hard to stay objective, and they discredit much of what they’re told if there isn’t evidence to back it up. A sizable chunk of their information comes from recorded conversations with Courtney Love, who unwittingly forgets to protect herself when she’s desperate for ego stroking. It’s a well balanced, disturbing, and fascinating look at how badly humans can behave when they’re needy and hurting.