In Cold Blood, written by Truman Capote, was first published in 1966. It follows the 1959 murders of the Herbert Clutter family in a small community in Kansas. When Capote learned of the murders, he decided to travel to Kansas to write about the crimes. He was accompanied by his friend, Harper Lee.
This month a title similar in topic was published. Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep gives an account of Harper Lee's fascination with the 1979 trial of Reverend Willie Maxwell. Reverend Maxwell was accused of killing five of his family members for insurance money. Eventually he was acquitted, but Reverend Maxwell was then gunned down by a family member in an act of vigilante justice.
Sitting in the audience during the vigilante's trial was Harper Lee, who traveled from New York City to her native Alabama with the idea of writing her own In Cold Blood.
Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee outlines the trial of Reverend Maxwell, his killer's trial, and Harper Lee's efforts to write about the trial--similar to that of her friend Truman Capote.
Look below for more books like this and In Cold Blood.
The stunning story of an Alabama serial killer and the true-crime book that Harper Lee worked on obsessively in the years after To Kill a Mockingbird. Reverend Willie Maxwell was a rural preacher accused of murdering five of his family members for insurance money in the 1970s. With the help of a savvy lawyer, he escaped justice for years until a relative shot him dead at the funeral of his last victim. Despite hundreds of witnesses, Maxwell's murderer was acquitted--thanks to the same attorney who had previously defended the Reverend. Sitting in the audience during the vigilante's trial was Harper Lee, who had traveled from New York City to her native Alabama with the idea of writing her own In Cold Blood, the true-crime classic she had helped her friend Truman Capote research seventeen years earlier. Lee spent a year in town reporting, and many more working on her own version of the case. Now Casey Cep brings this nearly inconceivable story to life, from the shocking murders to the courtroom drama to the racial politics of the Deep South. At the same time, she offers a deeply moving portrait of one of the country's most beloved writers and her struggle with fame, success, and the mystery of artistic creativity.
On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of the Clutter family were savagely murdered by blasts from a shotgun held a few inches from their faces. There was no apparent motive for the crime, and there were almost no clues. As Truman Capote reconstructs the murder and the investigation that led to the capture, trial, and execution of the killers, he generates both mesmerizing suspense and astonishing empathy.