On November 15, 1959, four members of the Clutter family were murdered in their Kansas farmhouse. Capote spent six years researching and writing this account, interviewing everyone, including the killers. He called it a nonfiction novel, claiming to have invented a new form. The prose is novelistic: scenes, dialogue, the reconstruction of consciousness. Whether Capote was entirely truthful became controversial. The book was a sensation; Capote never completed another. Perry Smith's childhood; the rope, the shotgun, the blood: the details are meticulous. The murders have no meaning. The book gives them shape.