I had high hopes for Roseanne Montillo's "Wilderness of Ruin". It sounded like it might be similar to Erik Larson's "Devil in the White City". I think that was her intention, it just didn't really gel. She took the story of convicted child killer Jesse Pomeroy, who at the age of 14 tortured and murdered several younger children, and tried to connect it to the Great Boston Fire with some of Herman Melville's life thrown in for good measure. The transitions were jarring and didn't make sense, and there wasn't much about Pomeroy at all. "Fiend" by Harold Schechter is a much better book about this young killer.
I really enjoyed Zoe Howe's biography of Stevie Nicks. Howe has a great, quirky sense of humor she incorporates into the story, which made Stevie's already interesting and incredible life even more fun to read about. It was softly done, a real love letter, but that was fine by me because I prefer not to hear anything nasty about Ms. Nicks. I do adore her. I've only seen her perform live about a dozen times now :)
Some of Max Allan Collins' Mickey Spillane Hammer books have been better than others. "Kill Me, Darling" was one of the really good ones. Velda has left Mike, who has spent the last four months she's been gone living in a bottle. Pat convinces Mike to crawl out of in when he tells him that Velda's shacked up with some nasty gangster type named Quinn down in Miami. Since Velda's old undercover boss was recently murdered, Pat and Mike think Velda was doing him a favor and investigating this guy, and now she might very well be in danger but too deep in to get out. Mike sobers up and heads down to Florida to rescue Velda. It was fun, and the descriptions of Miami in the 1950s were great.
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