Lightning round with Led Zeppelin, ancient mysteries and sex on the brain

Here’s the book-review equivalent of the lightning round. Short takes on a lot of great new books.

Any Led Zeppelin fan who’s ever seen The Song Remains the Same remembers the story of the band’s $203,000 stash cash from their hotel. In Black Dogs (Three Rivers Press, $13.95), author Jason Buhrmester imagines what might have happened. In this case, he sees the main culprit as a semi-deranged Black Sabbath fan working as a backstage caterer at Madison Square.  Lots of great, sharp dialogue – kind of like an updated His Girl Friday script – and insider rock geek stuff make this book indispensible.

Philipp Meyer’s American Rust (Speigel & Grau, $24.95) has been getting a lot of buzz and justifiably so. Much of the buzz comes in the form of this-is-a-serious-LITERARY novel, but don’t let that scare you off.

This article appears in Apr 8-14, 2009.