1965 third printing, paperback. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote Considered Truman Capote’s masterpiece, In Cold Blood shocked readers when it was first serialized in The New Yorker in 1965. Meticulously researched, this nonfiction narrative chronicles the lives of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas, and of the two men, Richard Eugene Hickock and Perry Edward Smith, who brutally murdered them on November 15, 1959. A seminal work of “New Journalism,” the story is told in chapters that alternate between the Clutter household and the approach of Smith and Hickock in their black Chevrolet; then, between the investigation of the case and the killers’ flight. Capote’s account is so detailed that readers will be immersed and feel like they were participants in the chilling events.