Me and the Devil (2012)

Nick Tosches is best known for penning erudite, bad-behavior-obsessed biographies that often read like novels. So it makes sense that this erudite, bad-behavior-obsessed novel Me and the Devil — about the boozy, gastronomic, sadomasochistic adventures of a writer named Nick — often reads like a memoir. Indeed, much of the fun comes from trying to divine the real from the fictive. Does the actual Tosches regularly dine with Keith Richards? Probably, given that the Stone gifted this book with a blurb. Did the author really suck blood from young lovers in the belief that said practice would turn him into a god? Lordy, one hopes not. B