"In Cold Blood: A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequences." 8vo.  343 pp. Cloth bound with dust jacket. Strangely and uniquely signed and inscribed by the author on the half-title page to someone of the same name as the book's subject, the killer Perry Smith, "for Perry Smith / with all good wishes / Truman Capote." Near fine copy. Red cloth on boards with T.C. in gilt on cover and title in bright gilt on spine. In the original first issue dust jacket with 1/66 code on front flap and "Publishers of the American College Dictionary and the Modern Library" on rear flap, very good, price clipped.

In the early morning hours of November 15, 1959, four members of the Clutter family were murdered in a rural Kansas farming community. Two ex-convicts, Perry Smith and Richard Hickock, were captured six weeks later, put on trial, found guilty of the murders and sentenced to death. They would remain on death row for nearly six years, before both being executed on April 14, 1965. Even before they were apprehended, writer Truman Capote had developed an interest in the story and traveled to Holcomb, Kansas, to interview the locals. After Smith and Hickcock were imprisoned, Capote interviewed both extensively, eventually befriending them and serving as an official witness to their executions. He compiled over 8,000 pages of research notes while writing In Cold Blood, which was first published as a four-part serial in The New Yorker, beginning on September 25, 1965. Random House released it in book form on January 17, 1966, where it achieved overnight success. 

In his story of the killers, Richard Hickock and Perry Smith, Capote paints an especially empathetic portrait of Smith. George Garrett, writing in Virginia Quarterly Review, says Capote presents Smith with a “deeply dimensional sympathy,” depicting him as a human first, then a criminal

Smith first appears just a few pages into the book, introduced as an adventurer, a world traveler, flitting between Alaska, Hawaii, Japan, and Hong Kong. We learn that he likes to write, draw, and sing: he envisions himself as an entertainer and has already thought of a stage name: Perry O’Parsons. Capote describes him: “dark, moist eyes”; “pink lips and a perky nose”; “a quality of roguish animation.” Capote waits until the end of the book to reveal the gruesome facts of the crime. Only after we’ve read a detailed description of Smith’s backstory do we learn that Smith was the shooter. 

By all accounts, Capote developed a close bond with Smith and according to many people who knew Capote, he saw something of himself in Smith. Both were short. Both endured brutal childhoods featuring parental abandonment. Both were intelligent with a propensity for wordsmithing. Both were gay.

To this day, the exact nature of Capote’s relationship with Smith is unclear. It may have been nothing more than manipulation on Capote’s part, the writer sweet-talking the young man behind bars, plying him with gifts and compliments, helping with legal matters, all in a bid to get Smith to tell his dramatic story. Others have claimed that Capote and Smith fell in love.