Overmarinated

Too big at times: “City on Fire” can occasionally feel overmarinated in research (the author having seemingly inhaled whole books like “Love Goes to Buildings on Fire, ” Will Hermes’s terrific portrait of the New York music scene in the mid-70s), and the reader can’t help feeling that a few judicious nips and tucks might have dispersed the longueurs that waft around the third quarter of the book.