Brad has committed murder and barricaded himself inside his house. With the help of his friends and neighbours, the cops piece together the strange tale of how this nice young man arrived at such a dark place.

Truman Capote's semi-autobiographical first novel about coming of age in the Deep South during the 1930s centers on 13-year-old Joel Sansom (David Speck), who reunites with his estranged father at the family's shabby plantation, where he must contend with his father's feisty mistress and a strange cousin. Against this less-than-ideal backdrop, Joel slowly matures into an upstanding young man.

A street-wise kid, Mark Sway, sees the suicide of Jerome Clifford, a prominent Louisiana lawyer, whose current client is Barry 'The Blade' Muldano, a Mafia hit-man. Before Jerome shoots himself, he tells Mark where the body of a Senator is buried. Clifford shoots himself and Mark is found at the scene, and both the FBI and the Mafia quickly realize that Mark probably knows more than he says.