The writer Truman Capote wanted to write a great, almost legendary sort of book matching a true crime report that would be non-fiction. With this book he hoped to somehow combine myth and fact, the concept that is really popular nowadays. The book he wrote was called ‘In Cold Blood’ and myth was replaced with facts. The plot of the book is basically homicidal murders at the hands of two psychopaths and the story is set in an obscure town in Kansas. The style of the book was a trendsetter for other non-fiction books. The writer combines non-fiction of a hybrid nature along with prose and this is copied by many writers and journalists and is important in the journalism movement.
The story revolves around a homicide involving the killing of a rich farmer and his wife and kids in Holcomb Kansas. When the writer of the book was made aware of true crime report of the four people otherwise known as the Clutter family, he went to Kansas with Harper lee a friend and also a fellow writer.
Together these two writers held interviews of investigators and people who lived in the area along with in the end interviewing the killer themselves whose names were Perry Smith and Richard Hickock who were convicted shortly after the killings. Capote spent a period of time amounting to 6 years on his non-fiction venture. A lot of research was carried out over this true crime report in this time and after the arrest, trial and conviction of the murderers he interviewed them too.
Capote had a particular interest in one of the murderers named Smith and he expressed that he was perhaps more conscious of his guilt and had a more sensitive disposition compared to Hickock. The writers never wrote any notes regarding this true crime report but committed much of this to memory. By him the American jurisprudence’s system of appeals is thought to be based on luck. The book describes the killers’ journey from Federal courts from state courts and then finally the Supreme Court. Capote didn’t agree with the trial narrative found in ‘The Executioner’s Song’ by Norman Mailer.
true crime report
‘In Cold Blood’ came out in 1966 as a novel of non-fiction. The book was a sensational best-seller and gave Capote much fame and critical acclaim. His work however is controversial and considered to be fabricated by some real-life crime writers it still was very important in setting a trend for journalists and other writers of the same genre regarding what should be in a true crime report. Capote is still a pioneer in this particular genre of writing. Many writers have since that time attempted writing non-fiction books but everyone knows that Truman Capote really started the trend and knew how to write very effectively in the style he has chosen. Such books are always a delight to read because of a human being’s innate interest in crime and murder and their incurable fascination for it that such books feed.