Meticulously interweaved stories intertwine and alight at 1959 - still the greatest single year in jazz history to many, James Kaplan's instinct driven angle and writing style coaxes the narrative on and on and has the stop bath smell of the darkroom about it, the excitement of an unknowable image emerging from the gloom increasingly vivid as pages turn and scroll on. Shaped around an icons view of jazz history, and the way such totemic figures' influence rippled out most potently by word of mouth and received wisdom - some things don't change - it's the personalities as well as the music as well as the pride and just as often prejudices of the day surrounding the music makers that matter in Kaplan's telling most. It's not a naive narrative at all. But these stories, naysayers may be so bold to carp, have all been told before in differently angled ways, most notably by Miles himself, Ian Carr, Ashley Kahn and Richard Williams in the case of Miles Davis; Lewis Porter and Ben Ratliff in the case of John Coltrane; Peter Pettinger and Keith Shadwick in the case of Bill Evans.

Notwithstanding all these achievements Kaplan's book wraps, rewraps and eventually unties all the knotty bows around the boxes that have long held firm thus far. OK, not as literary a style as another groundbreaker in the subjective style stakes that Geoff Dyer employed so dazzlingly on the semi-fictional But Beautiful or Rafi Zabor on his funny novel The Bear Comes Home, however, the writing is just as accomplished and convincing. 3 Shades of Blue: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans and The Lost Empire of Cool ought to re-ignite a passion for the period all over again in even the most jaded minds of jazz flâneurs everywhere, surely, who may think they have read it all before and dipped in to the past enough. Kaplan proves they haven't. Published by the Penguin Press (US) and by Canongate Books (UK/Ireland) in hardcover, 496 pages. John Coltrane, pictured, top