Steve Turner has written that rare thing: an intelligent, discriminating and absorbing pop biography. Marvin Gaye's unhappy life - beset by sexual confusion, drug addiction, artistic insecurity and financial calamity - and his grotesque death offer enough lurid material for the worst excesses of showbiz hackery, but Turner keeps his cool and his distance, and the result is a balanced, yet engrossing portrait of a genuinely troubled person. Gaye's jealous, resentful, unstable father did for him in the end (and with a gun that the son had provided for Gaye senior's protection), but the music remains as vibrant as ever, especially the exhilarating 1971 What's Going On, one of the finest pop albums ever made and a current favourite with a young audience who were in their nappies when Gaye was murdered in 1984. Mercy mercy me.