We won't blame Hawes for not bothering with any personal research and for restricting his information sources to the tabloids. After all, that's what most of these "celebrity biographies" are about. We do blame him though for his uncritical acceptance of all this information. We blame him even more for his misquotes, when the only obvious difficulty of his copying task was to copy correctly. But most of all, we blame him for his self-concocted, unfounded and unasked for readings of Depp's actions and motivations. That these readings seem to reveal a, not admitted but hardly veiled, antipathy of the author for his subject is a pity, but well... that is of course a problem that only concerns the author himself.

The mention "edited 1998" is certainly misleading. A look at the table of contents shows us that the last chapter is called "Ed Wood and Don Juan", and makes it clear that this book is by no means a recent creation. Actually this a 1998 hardback U.S. edition of a 1995 version, edited by Parragon Book Service, England. Pathetic, however, is the clumsy, half-hearted attempt to conceal this fact by adding a couple of paragraphs that must bridge the gap to the present. This idea of telescoping three years of biography into one single page was not a good one. The information we get thus is not only incomplete but also confusing as to the importance of the events that took place. A major film as "Donnie Brasco" for instance is disposed of in a few words.

Johnny Depp certainly deserves better than this, and so does the reader. Do we have to add that no sources are mentioned, and that the "filmography" is limited to the name of the film and the year of release? Can we then at least say something positive about the (few) illustrations? Well - apart of course from the fact that they feature Johnny Depp - the answer must be no. The book holds a selection of some of the most frequently reproduced photos, which even to the newcomer won't offer a single surprise, except their astonishingly bad quality. Yet another reason why a reader, looking for a first introduction on Johnny Depp, can certainly make better choices than this disappointing little book.