A very different book from Cody's Anna Lee series, Gimme More is a story of the seamy underbelly of the music business, where the right hand specializes in not knowing what the left hand is doing, where the wheels within the wheels reveal only more wheels. Birdie Walker is a fabulous heroine, an ex-rocker chick who gathers legends like lint, a survivor in a world where only the martyred are valued, a hard intelligence whose former perfect beauty has kept her from ever being taken seriously. Birdie is neither kind nor honest -- she has lived by her wits for years, indulging in an endless series of cons as much for the rush of power they give her as for the money she makes -- but she has her own integrity and protects what is truly valuable to her against the forces of commercialization and trivialization. In some ways, this book reminds me strongly of Thomas Maxwell's The Suspense Is Killing Me, another story of a search for the legacy of a rock star who is suspected of being not quite as dead as he's made out to be. ( )