Books: Broken Prey by John Sandford. Lucas Davenport is back on the police force after 3 years of self-induced retirement. Although he is unencumbered by his insufferably beautiful, talented and smart wife in this installment, he in no way strays from the monogamous straight-and-narrow leaving to reader to concentrate solely on the search for the particularly heinous killer. And on the list of the 100 greatest rock and roll songs Davenport is attempting to create for his iPod. He struggles and considers, discards and resurrects, contemplates and mulls. All while solving the crime, staying chaste and faithful, and not drinking more than absolutely necessary. Davenport is a prickly fellow, though not nearly as terse or witty as Parker's Spenser, with nary a blemish on his honor. I prefer my heroes to have a a few nicks and scars in the armor here and there.

The list itself, published at the end of the book, cost me $37 today on iTunes. Out of the 100 tunes:

1. I already had 6 on my iPod.

2. I downloaded 23 that were listed but that I didn't have.

3. There were 4 that I would have downloaded, but could not because they weren't on iTunes.

4. Another 14 were purchased that were in some way related to the 23 above.

5. I wasted an entire afternoon going through the list, listening to various versions of many of the songs, hunting for others that apparently were never released, and just generally spending way more time on this than I have on any work-related project in months.