Who Killed Kurt Cobain?: The Mysterious Death of an Icon - Hardcover

On April 8, 1994, Kurt Cobain's corpse was discovered in his Seattle home. By the summer of 1996, rumors of cover-up and murder were making the rounds in coffee shops and rock clubs and on the Internet, with most fingers pointing at Cobain's widow, Courtney Love. Music journalists Halperin and Wallace fill about half their pages with a serviceable joint biography of Cobain and Love, though the meat of the book is their investigation into the rock star's death. The essence of the crime theory, as promulgated by Tom Grant, a private investigator initially hired by Love herself, is that Cobain was murdered with a fatal injection of pure heroin, and then shot. The question of why anyone, after injecting a known junkie with a fatal dose of heroin, would bother to shoot him is the most prominent problem with the theory. The authors cite other, perhaps more provocative data, including statements by a man who claims he was hired to kill Cobain. The motive the authors uncover seems more plausible: When the two rock stars wed, they report, Love, the more successful of the pair at the time, made Cobain sign a prenuptial agreement. But now Cobain was worth a fortune, and there is some evidence that Cobain was going to divorce Love. The evidence isn't solid, and in fact much of what's presented here is wispy, but the authors certainly seem to have dug hard, making this, while not a good bet for serious true crime fans, manna for rumor-mongers and for those who find horror behind the ironic names of Nirvana and Love. Illustrations not seen by PW.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Just who did kill Kurt Cobain? Was it really Cobain himself, through careless use of drugs and intentional aim with a rifle? Or was it Courtney Love, Cobain's extravagant and chameleon-like wife? Or could it have been someone she hired--a professional assassin or lucky amateur? At this point one can't tell, yet the compelling chain of events that Halperin and Wallace expose constitutes evidence of a plausible alternative explanation to the official verdict of suicide. Cobain's short life (he was 27 when he died) was fraught with anguish--broken family, lost love and a desperate search for its return, youthful rebellion, homelessness, drugs. Reality surpassed Cobain's dreams, yet even when he became a millionaire rock star, his past wouldn't let go, and he continued to drown depression in heavy drug use. Halperin and Wallace have written a very good and interesting book, sans hero worship, for fans of pop music and murder mysteries alike, one that soberly lays out the case for thinking this pop icon's death may not be an open-and-shut case. Raul Nino