There are a number of reasons why Elvis Costello has not been the subject of a serious biography. As Phil Hogan notes in a review for The Observer, “in the years since his gawky genius first excited the punk prophets of 1977, his career has not been one to invite simple categorisation.” There is, as well, another reason: “no pop artist guarded his secrets with a greater sense of physical menace.” But in Complicated Shadows: The Life and Music of Elvis Costello, Graeme Thomson has risked the wrath of Elvis to consider both his genius and his dark side (such as the time he called Ray Charles an “ignorant, blind nigger”) . . . and to postulate what’s behind it all: a father who had to give up making the kind of music he loved.