Alright, here's the book's premise, plain and simple: All those "Paul is dead" clues you've heard? Those were all actually about John. John prophesied his own death in 1980 at the hands of Mark David Chapman, and either consciously or subliminally implanted clues about it in every song he's written since "One After 909." Oh, and James Joyce and J.D. Salinger knew about it, too.
John had to die in 1980 because roughly twenty years before that he sold his soul to the devil for fame and fortune. Beyond all that, Mark David Chapman was created as a Rosemary's Baby-style emissary of the devil to fulfill the contract on John Lennon's soul, even before the soul-selling ever happened.
Niezgoda, whose byline calls him a "life-long Beatles fan, collector, and scholar," has written this fairly short paperback to list all the clues of the above situation, usually just in the form of commentary between quotes of other Beatles history books. For reasons that should be clear, any real Beatles fan will find this book either somewhat amusing or highly infuriating (much like Across the Universe, actually).
About the first half of the book reads like a simplistic history of the early Beatles and John Lennon's life, with only about one hilarious tie-in to the book's thesis per page. Let me give you a few examples:
"Epstein replied, 'It's all right, Mrs. Smith. I promise you, John will never suffer. He's the only important one. The others don't matter, but I'll always take care of John.' And now Niezgoda's commentary on the quote, "And that he did — almost as if it was his sole purpose in life."
"Lennon had no answer [to the interviewers who asked why the band was so popular] — or no answer that he wanted to share. Others, at least metaphorically, began to allude to 'devilish' behavior."
That's the tone of the first half of the book, which can make for a laugh-a-minute if you're in the right mindset. It exhibits the kind of insanity that's just so fun to watch, much like a rabid monkey who's escaped from the zoo or Suze Orman.
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