Prefaced by a quotation from Francis Bacon ("There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion"), Kaplan's account of Frank Sinatra's well-documented first four decades is an attempt to bring the singer to life on the page. While Kaplan never shrinks from Sinatra's "strangeness"  his petulance, selfishness and all-consuming ego  and is happy to touch on some scandal-sheet favourites (quoting Ava Gardner's notorious assessment of her husband's physique), he makes it clear that his interest mainly lies in his subject's craft. Novelistic imaginings concerning the young Frank's relationship with his mother Dolly, or his involvement with Gardner and first wife Nancy, pall slightly with their slangy swagger. Yet when Kaplan writes about the ways in which Sinatra was able to get beneath the skin of a song, he comes closest to that figure on stage,"having his sweet way with the rhythm and generally making you feel as if he were letting you in on a story he might have just made up then and there".