In these gems of reportage Truman Capote takes true stories and real
people and renders them with the stylistic brio we expect from great
fiction. Here we encounter an exquisitely preserved Creole aristocrat
sipping absinthe in her Martinique salon; an enigmatic killer who sends
his victims announcements of their forthcoming demise; and a proper
Connecticut householder with a ruinous obsession for a twelve-year-old
he has never met. And we meet Capote himself, who, whether he is smoking
with his cleaning lady or trading sexual gossip with Marilyn Monroe,
remains one of the most elegant, malicious, yet compassionate writers to
train his eye on the social fauna of his time.