The Last Book I Read

Nick Tosches is one of the great stylists among writers who write about popular music. His Country: The Biggest Music in America, Hellfire: The Jerry Lee Lewis Story, The Unsung Heroes of Rock and Roll, and Dino are first rate for both cultural insight and entertainment value. So I was really looking forward to his latest, a take on the links between organized (and not-so-organized) crime and the music industry in the period immediately preceding the British Invasion, called Save the Last Dance for Satan. It certainly scores in terms of entertainment value, but I kind of miss any real insight on the topic, which is laid out in rather sketchy fashion. This may be a consequence of this short book being an expanded magazine essay, as the stories feel a bit haphazard, and there's little effort to really cover the topic in anything more than anecdotal form. To be fair, while Tosches is certainly capable of longer and deeper form narrative (Dino, his biography of Dean Martin certainly falls into that category) Last Dance seems to have emerged from impromptu conversations that may not have been intended as research, resulting in a kind of ad hoc work. Anyway, I'd offer a qualified recommendation of the book-- Tosches' blunt, even hardboiled style is always a treat to read, but it's a whole lot more satisfying when he really digs into his topic, which doesn't always seem to be the case here.