Book of a lifetime: In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

From The Independent archive: Kate Colquhoun on the pioneering non-fiction novel that paints a senseless murder in vivid detail

Truman Capote in Milan in 1966 (Keystone/Getty)

When Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood was first published in 1966, he characterised it as the first “non-fiction novel”. What remains remarkable about it, even in a market suffused with narrative history, is Capote’s groundbreaking ability to fuse fact with the hard-won skills of fiction. The book – for which he made a reputed 8,000 pages of research notes – is plotted and structured with taut writerly flair. Its characters pulse with recognisable life; its places are palpable.

Careful prose binds the reader to his unfolding story. Put simply, the book was conceived of journalism and born of a novelist. Capote engages us from the outset with forensically precise detail that leaves no peeling flake of old Kansas paint unnoticed. First Holcomb, a small town on the limitless wheat plains; then the weather, “ideal for apple-eating, the whitest sunlight descending from the purest sky”; then the house, with spongy carpets, gleaming floors, the whiff of lemon-scented polish and crushed tissues in the corners of its bedroom drawers. In thus slowing the pace, Capote ramps up the tension.

We know that this space and its bright silence will be violated. We know that the “certain foreign sounds” are gunshots that will snuff out the lives of four members of the kindly, Methodist Clutter family. Like the finest crime thrillers, Capote’s narrative is rooted in place while the rhythm of the narrative is constantly manipulated. He switches focus between the Clutters and their murderers, Dick Hickock and Perry Smith, marking their differences while binding their fates together.