Nearly forty years after its publication (and more than fifty years since the death of Brian Jones), this book remains a puzzler. Who was Nicholas Fitzgerald? Did he know Brian? He was a cousin of fellow Guinness heir Tara Browne, Brian's close friend, yet there seems to be no evidence that Fitzgerald himself was acquainted with Jones. The author died in 2009, so it's unlikely that this smaller enigma within the greater mystery of Brian's death will ever be solved.

But Brian Jones: The Inside Story of the Original Rolling Stone does have an important distinction in the realm of Stones literature, for it was in this book that the murder theory was first proposed. Jones was surrounded by some shady characters during the final days of his life, and even skeptics like Paul Trynka (author of Brian Jones: The Making of the Rolling Stones) acknowledge the sinister reference in Brian's autopsy report to "punctate hemorrhages" in the guitarist's brain. Unfortunately, Fitzgerald's book cannot be regarded as a reliable source, filled as it is with glaringly obvious errors. (He claims, for example, that he saw Keith Richards looking shaken and stunned at Brian's funeral. In fact, Keith did not attend the funeral; neither did Mick Jagger, who was out of the country at the time.) And, while there are many glossy black and whites in the book, they're all press photos. We don't see a single shot of Brian Jones and Nicholas Fitzgerald together. Perversely, Fitzgerald was actually a good writer: he paints a vividly eccentric portrait of former Stones hanger-on Jimmy Phelge, who eventually wrote a memoir of his own. Is it an accurate portrait, though? Impossible to say, given Fitzgerald's general unreliability. My best guess is that someone else (multiple sources, perhaps) fed the story to Fitzgerald, who wrote and published it as a first-person account.

If you're interested in the circumstances of Brian's death, you're going to encounter this book sooner or later. When you do, read it with a healthy grain of salt. ( )