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Author Irvin Muchnick dropped by Borders Thursday night, promoting his book “CHRIS & NANCY: The True Story of the Benoit Murder-Suicide and Pro Wrestling’s Cocktail of Death.”

The book is about WWE professional wrestler Chris Benoit, who killed his wife and seven-year-old son before hanging himself in 2007. Muchnick tries to explain the heinous murder, including whether wrestling-related concussions or steroids contributed to Benoit’s actions.

According to the blog Bookgasm, Muchnick has written about pro wrestling in the past. Muchnick penned a series for Penthouse in the late ’80s that delved into allegations of drug use and violence, including the story of the Von Erich brothers, two of whom died at their own hands, and Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka, who in 1983 was the sole suspect in his girlfriend’s still-unresolved homicide.

Muchnick’s next stop on the Borders tour is Farmington, Saturday from 1 to 3 p.m.

P.S. In case you’re curious to find out more about Bookgasm, the site says it champions “all kinds of genre fiction, from horror and sci-fi to mystery and suspense. It also includes graphic novels, trashy paperbacks, cheap magazines and other things that much of America pretends to be ashamed of, for no good reason.”

I’ve realized, somewhat belatedly, that in my post about not reading enough fiction I erred in adding Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt to the list. My conscious brain realized that it was biography/memoir, but my subconscious brain always confuses McCourt with Ian McEwan, who actually does right fiction.

Angela’s Ashes is still more narrative and novelistic than anything I’ve read in awhile. Which is leading toward a bit of a problem. Young Frank McCourt is so hungry throughout his Irish childhood, lived in grinding poverty, that all he talks about is wanting food. And he rhapsodizes about it so much, repeating the same delicious-sounding phrases over and over, that all I want to eat  now is mashed potatoes with salt and butter, boiled cabbage, ham, milk straight from a cow, fried bread (whatever that is) and apples stolen from an orchard. I broke down and had the potatoes last night, as salty as I could stand them, and see cabbage in my near future. The rest is going to be a little harder to come by.

Before we started reading “The Nine” I unsuccessfully tried to cram in one of my favorite guilty pleasures: “Wicked Prey,” the latest in a series of mysteries by a former Twin Cities journalist who writes under the name John Sandford.

The Prey series is one of two I picked up as a young teenager because my mom read them and they seemed grown up. My tastes have long since shifted, but, though you’ll never find me waxing nostaligic about another pre-teen fave, Mary Higgins Clark, you’ll always find me with a copy of the latest Prey book.

When I finished Jeffrey Toobin, I picked up Sandford. More than anything, I wanted to see what the hero, a former-cop-turned-state-agent named Lucas Davenport, was up to. The books rely a little too heavily on boilerplate mystery cliches, but the pace, both in the book and as you read it, is fast enough to keep you involved. The problem with the Prey books is that they’re all so similar, I tend to forget them almost as soon as I read them.  I can’t really tell you where the last book’s narrative thread ran out, but I can tell you a lot about Davenport. There’s something about Davenport and the way he moves through the cities that makes me want to sign up for the Minneapolis police force, too.

I feel the same way about the other mystery series with a solid place on my own young adult shelf, the Kinsey Millhone novels by Sue Grafton. Millhone is a private investigator in a Santa Barbara-like fake town called Santa Teresa. More importantly, the book titles are in such a form — “A is for Alibi,” “B is for Burglar,” “C is for Corpse,” — that guessing what the next title would be was a favorite car game for my family when we were young kids. Coming up: “U is for Undertow.” We didn’t guess that one. Still waiting for news on the X. Xerox was really our best shot because x-ray seemed like cheating.

Because Grafton writes the books as if little time is passing in Millhone’s world between each one, it’s still the 80’s in Santa Teresa. And that makes the feeling that I’m revisiting my own past even stronger. Whatever I’m doing in my real life, I’m spending the end of the day or so it takes me to suck down one of these books scoping out properties on the southern California coastline so that I can get into my VW Rabbit and go become a private investigator. Not that I have a Rabbit. Or the skills to become an investigator.

SPOILER ALERT: You know what happens in “Wicked Prey?” Lucas Davenport catches the bad guys. Ah, the reassuring feeling of a predictable trip to a favorite place.

I went hiking in the Lucius Pond Ordway/Devil’s Den Preserve in Weston Friday and, for the first time, I understood the inspiration for the naturalists and poets from New England. It was such a breezy day, with the sun lightly but steadily pressing through the shade just enough to remind me that it was summer, and with enough recent rain that the loamy smell of freshly churned earth still made it feel sufficiently like the woods.

In my mind, Connecticut consisted only of well-groomed suburbs. New England is really lucky in that industrial development happened here early in the country’s history and impressed upon its citizenry the importance of preserving open space. I grew up in Arkansas, where everyone’s backyard looks like the preserve; natural and overgrown and richly green. But because every backyard looks so lusciously untouched, Arkansans can take such views for granted. Heavy development in the northwestern part of the state has affected even my tiny hometown, which now has a stoplight on its widened highway.

All I can think about is my next hike, and to that end, our industrious and outdoor-loving web editor Jon Lucas lent me “50 Hikes in Connecticut: From the Berkshires to the Coast,” by David, Gerry and Sue Hardy. The fourth edition already looks like a good resource.