In Cold Blood is a non-fiction book first published in
1966, written by American author
Truman Capote; it details the 1959 murders of Herbert Clutter, a farmer from
Holcomb,
Kansas, his wife, and two of their four children.
When Capote learned of the quadruple murder, before the killers were captured, he decided to travel to Kansas and write about the crime. He was accompanied by his childhood friend and fellow author
Harper Lee, and together they interviewed local residents and investigators assigned to the case and took thousands of pages of notes. The killers,
Richard "Dick" Hickock and
Perry Smith, were arrested six weeks after the murders, and Capote ultimately spent six years working on the book.
Some critics consider Capote's work the original
non-fiction novel, although other writers had already explored the genre, such as
Rodolfo Walsh in
Operación Masacre (1957). In Cold Blood examines the complex psychological relationship between two parolees who together commit a mass murder. Capote's book also explores the lives of the victims and the effect of the crime on the community in which they lived. In Cold Blood is regarded by critics as a pioneering work of the
true crime genre, though Capote was disappointed that the book failed to win the
Pulitzer Prize.
