Well, That Was a Lot to Take In

 

TITLE: The Death of Prince Rogers Nelson: An Investigation

AUTHOR: Jay Corn

PUBLISHER: Independently Published

PUBLISHING DATE: November 20, 2018

PAGES: 389   

SOURCE: Kindle Unlimited

FROM GOODREADS: Follow law enforcement's two-year inquest into Prince's death, from the first 911 call through present day. Authored by an independent observer with extensive journalism experience, the book includes interviews with family, friends, current and former staffers, doctors and fellow musicians. Based on thousands of official documents, images, videos, audio recordings and lab reports. No hearsay. No anonymous sources. No theories or conspiracies. Welcome to the investigation.

MY THOUGHTS: I ran across a mention of this book in a Prince Facebook Group I'm a member of an was curious.  I saw it was available on Kindle Unlimited, so I grabbed it and over the course of about a month, read it in between other things.  I will say this book isn't for a lot of people.  It's a detailed collection of police interviews and activities surrounding Prince's death.  Having a criminal justice background, I probably found it more interesting than most, but even people in the group were slamming it and its contents.

While this really isn't something easily reviewed or even rated (I am rating my experience of reading it along with the writing style - not the actual events that happened), I did have a few takeaways.  One, Prince must have clearly suffered for a long time.  If you have ever seen any concert footage, or even the movie Purple Rain, Prince was extremely active on stage and over time, that, coupled with a what has to be Type A personality and working 18-20 hours a day every day, took its toll on his body.  Secondly, while no one was ever charged with providing Prince with the drugs which led to his death, a lot of people enabled his addiction and disguised it as his extreme desire for privacy.  Prince could have and should have been saved.  People who care about him should have been more concerned more about his welfare than just a paycheck. And finally, I never knew that Prince felt the elevator in Paisely Park was the Devil and always took the stairs.  This only ties in because his body was discovered inside the elevator.  Surely, he may have been feeling so badly he could not fathom using the stairs, but no one can explain why all his clothes were on backwards only adding to the fuel that the body was moved, and the death scene was staged. I always felt it was either a little odd or a little prophetic that he died in an elevator when one of his most famous songs states "When the elevator tries to bring you down, go crazy. Punch a higher floor."

Overall, I found this an interesting read that left me with a few questions which I accept will never be answered.  Luckily for me I can continue to enjoy the music Prince left behind and am appreciative that I lived in a time where I could witness his genius.

MY RATING: 3 PAWS