In Cold Blood

Truman Capote brought out In Cold Blood in 1966, and it is the book that established him as a writer of what he called the non-fiction novel: a true account told with the techniques of fiction.

Its subject is the killing of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas, in 1959. Capote heard about the murders before the men who committed them had been arrested and went to Kansas to write them up, taking with him Harper Lee, a childhood friend who was herself a novelist. The two of them interviewed neighbours, investigators and everyone else with something to say, and came away with thousands of pages of notes.

Richard Hickock and Perry Smith were caught six weeks after the killings. Capote worked on the book for six years in all, following the case from the crime through the investigation and into the lives of the two men, and the result is often named as the prototype of the true-crime novel and one of the best-selling books the genre has produced.