What really happened in the 83 minutes between Michael Jackson's doctor noticing he wasn't breathing and finally phoning 911 on 25 June 2009? This book seeks to lay bare the truth about that crucial window of time, which remains hazy to this day owing to conflicting accounts from Jackson's personal physician, Dr Conrad Murray, and other witnesses working at the singer's home on North Carolwood Drive in LA.
Despite the book's attempt to retell the story of Jackson's death from prescription drug intoxication in objective terms, it is clear the authors find Dr Murray guilty of neglecting Jackson during those pivotal 83 minutes, and administering dangerous anaesthetic drugs he should never have agreed to.
Jackson hired Murray in a desperate attempt to find a personal physician prepared to give him Propofol, an anaesthetic administered intravenously, to address the singer's increasing inability to sleep. In the last weeks of Jackson's life, Murray appeared to be trying to wean him off the dangerous drug, but a heady mixture of financial pressures and addictive tendencies led to a fatal dose being administered.
Murray had accepted $150,000 a month to act as Jackson's personal doctor for AEG Live, the company in charge of Jackson's big comeback shows in London. The singer became adamant he needed Propofol, what he called “milk”, to help him sleep to prepare for rehearsals.
Paramedics found Jackson unresponsive on his bed, on which rested a porcelain doll with curly golden hair. The bedroom was strewn with needles, cans of Red Bull and boxes of pills. Perhaps most eerily, Jackson was found wearing a condom catheter and sleeping on a waterproof mattress to cater for his supposed incontinence. The tragic tale of the boy who never grew up ended here.
But rather than being a page-turning account of the events that led up to Jackson's death, 83 Minutes is written as a painstaking survey. The 100 pages of footnotes are testament to the years of research, which makes for an informed read but not a particularly enjoyable one. The book feels more like an extended 300-page news story than a retelling of one of the biggest stories in the history of showbiz
Richards and Langthorne should be commended for choosing to tell a story that has relied so heavily on sensationalism in the purest of terms, but it is hard to tell quite who the book's audience is intended to be. It is devoid of any emotional insight, relying instead on facts and testimonies.
The Independent