In a series of fictional portraits Geoff Dyer captures the beating heart of jazz its pathos and lyricism urgency and self-destruction: Charlie Mingus in New York; Art Pepper in prison; Lester Young in the Alvin; Bud Powell in Paris. Drawing on how he hears the music of people like Mingus Monk Bud Powell Art Pepper and Lester Young Dyer has constructed eight variations like highly concentrated novels 80 per cent proof swigs of fiction. The result I think is brilliant.His attempts to recreate the drug-fogged music-drenched reality-melting racism-crazed insides of the minds of people like Powell Mingus Webster and Chet Baker are unnervingly effective. So too are his pen-portraits of their music .his long postscript on jazz today shows that he can operate as a lucid and catholic jazz critic as well Miles Kington INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY