CAPOTE, Truman. In Cold Blood. New York: Random House. 1965.
Original brown cloth, lettered in gilt with silver decorations to spine, author’s initials in gilt to front panel, maroon endpapers, trimmed top edge stained blue, the remainder untrimmed, in the dust-jacket designed by S. Neil Fujita; pp. [12], 343, [1]; photographic frontispiece and title page printed in brown and black; lightly pushed and faded to spine tips, jacket rubbed and nicked to extremities and folds, with a touch of loss to upper edges of spine folds; a near fine copy in a good jacket.
A smart first impression, in the first issue jacket, of this landmark of modern reportage; one of the great works of post-war American prose.
On 15 November 1959, four members of the Clutter family were murdered in their home in Holcomb, Kansas; a crime that seemed to lack motive and explanation. Capote devoted six years to investigating the murders and their aftermath, producing a work combining meticulous reportage with the methods of fiction to create what he famously called a 'nonfiction novel'. At its centre are portraits of the murderers, Perry Smith and Richard Hickock, the pair portrayed with cool precision. A landmark of modern prose, ,In Cold Blood transformed the possibilities of narrative non-fiction; it remains one of the century's most compelling accounts of crime and punishment.
SKU: 2123722