From his emergence in the 1950s - when an uncannily beautiful young man from Oklahoma appeared on the West Coast and became, seemingly overnight, the prince of 'cool' jazz - until his violent, drug-related death in Amsterdam in 1988, Chet Baker lived a life that has become an American myth. Sexy, angelic, needy, and forbidding all at once, the so-called 'James Dean of Jazz' struck a note of menace in the staid fifties. His cool mannerisms have been reincarnated in countless American teenagers. Now, drawing on hundreds of interviews and previously untapped sources, James Gavin gives a hair-raising account of the trumpeter's dark journey. The story of Baker's demise - a previously unsolved riddle - is revealed here at last. So is the truth behind his tormented childhood, the pain of which would haunt his whole life. Gavin explores the birth of the melancholy playing and fragile tenor voice that catapulted the musician to fame. Behind his icy fa-ade lay something ominous, unspoken. The mystery drove both sexes crazy. But his only real romance, apart from music, was with drugs. In mesmerising detail, Gavin narrates the harrowing spiral of dependency down which Baker tumbled, dragging with him those who dared get close. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and previously untapped sources, James Gavin brilliant recreates the life of a man whose journey from golden promise to eventual destruction mirrored America's fall from post-war innocence - but whose music has never lost the power to enchant and seduce us.