The First True Crime Book

In Cold Blood: A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequences by Truman Capote
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Written in 1966, In Cold Blood is the mother of all non-fiction true crime books. Every book in the genre owes something to this book, which set the bar high for everything that came after such as the true crime books of Vincent Bugliosi.

What Capote did was to turn crime reporting into form resembling fiction, so that, rather than dry crime writing, the facts unfold like they would in a well-written novel.

When reading In Cold Blood, you get the feeling that Capote was conscious of creating a new genre in the way he presents the facts. It's not surprising that it took him six years to write the book, which was, not coincidentally, the time frame of the book itself.

The book tells of the murder of the Clutter family on a remote farm in western Kansas, which appeared to have had no motive. Eventually two young men, Perry Smith and Dick Hickok were tried and convicted of the crime and ultimately hanged for the crime. Those are the facts, but what the book reveals are the stories of the two men and how their lives led them to this violent act.

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