Was Cobain death as simple as it looked?

Who Killed Kurt Cobain? The Mysterious Death of an Icon. By Ian Halperin and Max Wallace. Birch Lane Press. 214 pages. $19.95.

As you look at the jacket and title of Ian Halperin and Max Wallace's book, you may find yourself perplexed: Aren't the victim and perpetrator one and the same? Finish the book and you may not be so sure.

In April 1994, Cobain the lead singer-guitarist-songwriter of Nirvana died of what, officially, was ruled a self-inflicted shotgun blast to the head.

An autopsy revealed he had a lethal dose of heroin in his system. He was found alone in his Seattle home. Cobain had written a song called "I Hate Myself and I Want to Die." It appears that he tried to overdose earlier on a European tour. He was a heroin addict. He was unhappy with stardom and scorned the simplistic "voice of a generation" proclamations. He had a volatile relationship with his wife, Courtney Love, of the band Hole. His lyrics were full of fear and self-loathing.

Add everything up and it seems to equal suicide. But Halperin and Wallace, two Canadian journalists, assemble a patchwork of evidence that suggests but does not state otherwise.

As they see it, there are tendrils of allegations and suspicions that lead back to Cobain's widow, Love actress on the ascent, loose cannon always. Not that she injected the heroin, put the shotgun in his mouth, and pulled the trigger four years ago. No one alleges that. But the authors do present a case that suggests Cobain's death might have been in Love's best interest.

It is a strange journey, and the boat of evidence has more than a few holes in it. It's not helped by fairly pedestrian writing and an inability to explain what made Cobain so important and Nirvana so good.

Halperin and Wallace use private investigator Tom Grant, whom Love hired after Cobain's death, and Love's own father to raise doubts. (Both also have a vested interest in the case.)

They unearth various friends and acquaintances of Cobain not all of whom are exactly straight shooters who say that he was contemplating divorce; that she was bugging him about his will; that she derided him as unable to do anything without her; that she'd already put a wedge between him and his bandmates.

When the international news media came a-knocking after Cobain's death, she used the opportunity to promote Hole's album "Live Through This," with its posthumously chilling title. Her serial post-Cobain romances did not suggest a widow in mourning.

To their credit, the authors are not waving an "X-Files" flag of conspiracy. They're aware that the cast of characters alleging foul play is not beyond reproach.

There's Love's estranged father, Harrison (who's roadied for, written about and ticked off the Grateful Dead), who details what he sees as Love's lying and manipulative nature. There's the late El Duce, an alcoholic-junkie-lead singer for the punk band the Mentors, who claimed Love offered him $50,000 to off Cobain in the year preceding Cobain's death. (This material is also in Nick Broomfield's documentary film "Kurt and Courtney," which opened last month, and serves as a visceral companion piece to the book.) El Duce, since deceased, passed a lie detector test about the claim.

More modestly, the authors suggest the police investigation was hasty and cursory.

When a spouse dies, the surviving spouse often is under some degree of suspicion. Here, Seattle police saw the gunshot wound and, it seems, pretty much closed the case. Seattle's chief medical examiner was a former punk rocker and an old friend of Love's.

The authors suggest he may have "overlooked" a finding that revealed Cobain had three times the lethal amount of heroin in his system, an amount (both junkies and pathologists agree in this book) that would likely make him incapable of suicide by gunshot. To say nothing of putting away his works and rolling down his sleeve.

The authors make four other allegations casting doubt on the suicide verdict. There were no identifiable fingerprints on the gun, the box of shells, or the pen used to write the suicide note, they report. The note itself, they say, is vague enough to suggest Cobain wanted a respite from the rock life, not death and four lines of the note don't match the handwriting on the rest of it.

Three weeks before his death, they tell us, police were called to Cobain's house, and he told them he was hiding from Love. And finally, Cobain's credit card was used twice after his death, but before the body was found.

The authors set the stage with a biographical sketch of Cobain's youth, followed by one of Love. Separately, they had in common a semi-nomadic existence and an attraction to sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll.

Together, they shared all that and more. Cobain was, however, a nicer guy, and certainly more the genuine artist. Love comes off as a people-using, ladder-climbing, domineering, groupie-cum-rock star. (This, of course, before she remade herself as a movie star.) Love declined to be interviewed for the book.

To be sure, the authors do not offer, nor do they claim to have, any evidence implicating Love or anyone else in foul play. This is a book about suspicion, implication, possibility. They write that their intent is, simply, to get the case reopened. It might prove interesting if it were.