Murder he wrote

It is hard to imagine the author of Breakfast at Tiffany’s and In Cold Blood as the same man. In 1958, Truman Capote wrote the story of a social butterfly whose anxieties are banished by a trip to Tiffany’s; in 1959, he began his dark examination of a quadruple murder, In Cold Blood, a book he finished just before it finished him, in 1966. In Cold Blood was the first non-fiction novel, attaching skilful and superior writing to a sensational ‘real-life’ subject. Capote turns the microscope from the subject matter of the book on to its author, making a clinical study of his experience during these six years.

Reading of the murders in the New York Times, Capote telephones his editor at the New Yorker, William Shawn, to tell him he has found his new subject. Capote is intrigued by the impact that such a brutal (and apparently unmotivated) killing spree has had on the local community.