PLOTS thicker and more explosive than gunpowder, conspiracy theories more entangled than a kitten's ball of wool.

Then there is the countless opinions fed by miles of informed, uninformed, deformed and reformed speculation.

So do we need another book about John F Kennedy? Robert Dallek, the author of this latest work, asks that vexed inquiry as the introduction to his work. Throughout the next 711 pages he answers it assiduously and with consummate authority.

This book is one of the most valuable additions to a canon of work about the most high-profile member of America's equivalent of a royal dynasty.

Accorded privileged access to some of the files in the Kennedy Library in Boston, where the author is a professor of history at Boston University, Dallek has diligently widened the microscope on a life that has been in the spotlight almost since he was born until his excruciating assassination in 1963.

The saying goes that you can always remember where you where when JFK's life was snuffed out by gunfire. Even as a seven year old, I recall the news came just as we were finishing a birthday party at Simon Withe's house in the next through close on our council estate in Liverpool.

For the next few days a black and white television then replayed from across the Atlantic the snowy footage of murder, the 'revenge' killing of 'lone' assassin Lee Harvey Oswald and President Kennedy's sombre funeral.

Since then the Kennedy family has achieved mythic status, although always as much tarnished as burnished. And in that time JFK has emerged as a two-dimensional icon - serial womaniser and/or youthful President cut down before his prime.

What lies between is obviously the truth and Dallek succeeds vibrantly in fleshing out a more rounded, circumspect and accurate portrayal - American warts and all - of a man in the vanguard of momentous history both at home and abroad. It's unimpeachable.

Updated: 09:35 Wednesday, June 30, 2004