A frightening and fascinating example of top-notch nonfiction
Like In Cold Blood, Columbine is a horrific true story that fills listeners with a sense of doom at its very outset because they know exactly how it will end (the spooky music and ominous voice of narrator Don Leslie certainly add a sense of foreboding). But while most of us know the basic plot of the murders that occurred at Columbine High School in 1999, few know the full picture: the events that led up to it, the details of the day and the stories of the heroes, victims and investigative and media scrum that followed.

Two storylines stand out in Dave Cullen's exhaustively researched book. The first concerns the ways in which the account of the massacre was twisted, regurgitated, construed and mythologized just hours after it occurred — how even the students began telling a tale that didn't match the facts, because it was what they heard back from the media. The other, more chilling story is that of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, two very differently troubled people. While Klebold comes across as a confused, depressed, lost young man, Harris is depicted as a textbook psychopath, possibly doomed to a life of destruction even if the high school murders didn't occur. These two storylines come together even outside of the book, as many readers and critics debate Cullen's interpretation of the day's events and players, illustrating Cullen's point that Columbine means different things to different people who may choose to believe what they want. However it's interpreted, Columbine is frightening and fascinating, an example of top-notch nonfiction.