In Cold Blood

Truman Capote's pioneering 'non-fiction novel' reconstructs the horrific, true-life 1959 murder of the Clutter family in the small farming town of Holcomb, Kansas. The Clutters—a wealthy farmer, his wife, and two of their children—were savagely murdered by blasts from a shotgun with no apparent motive and almost no clues. The book meticulously details the lives of the victims, the investigation by the Kansas Bureau of Investigation (KBI) agent Alvin Dewey, and the cross-country flight and eventual capture, trial, and execution of the two killers, Perry Smith and Dick Hickock. Capote generates both mesmerizing suspense and astonishing empathy, yielding poignant insights into the nature of American violence and crime. The work is widely considered a masterpiece of the true crime genre and serious literature.

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