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On 16 November 1959 Capote read a short item in The New York Times: a farmer, his wife and two of their children had been found shot in their house in Holcomb, Kansas. A month later he was in Kansas with Harper Lee. He stayed with the case for six years, through the arrest of Perry Smith and Richard Hickock and up to their hanging in April 1965, and called the result a non-fiction novel: In Cold Blood (1966). Before it he had written Other Voices, Other Rooms and Breakfast at Tiffany's; it remains the book every writer on this list is measured against. The ten below were chosen on two counts: each reported a true story over months or years, and each told it with a novelist's tools.
By Lisanne Swart · 10 authors · Literary journalism · True crime · Updated October 2026
Quick answer
If you love Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, the closest match is Norman Mailer: The Executioner's Song does the same thing with a murderer in Utah. For the same cold eye on the 1960s, read Joan Didion; for the movement Capote's book helped start, Tom Wolfe; and for a French novelist facing the same moral problem, Emmanuel Carrère. Janet Malcolm is the argument against the whole method. Each entry below says what they reported and how they told it.
Where to start if you loved Truman Capote
If you want the closest match, read Norman Mailer.
The Executioner's Song. A real killer, a real execution, a thousand pages that read like a novel.
If you want the same coolness in shorter pieces, read Joan Didion.
Slouching Towards Bethlehem. California in the 1960s, one essay at a time.
If you want the moral question faced head-on, read Emmanuel Carrère.
The Adversary. A novelist and a murderer, and the writer's doubts kept on the page.
If you want the case against, read Janet Malcolm.
The Journalist and the Murderer. What a writer owes the person they write about.
If you want where it began, read John Hersey.
Hiroshima. Six survivors, 1946, twenty years before Capote.
If you want more true crime
My list of the best true crime books has the rest.
10 authors like Truman Capote
Frequently asked questions about authors like Truman Capote
Who should I read if I love Truman Capote?
Norman Mailer is the closest match: The Executioner's Song is a non-fiction novel about a murderer and his execution, written in the wake of In Cold Blood. Joan Didion, Tom Wolfe and Gay Talese belong to the same generation of literary journalists. Emmanuel Carrère, Michelle McNamara and Patrick Radden Keefe write true crime with a novelist's structure, Harper Lee was beside him in Kansas, John Hersey did something similar twenty years earlier, and Janet Malcolm questions the whole method.
What books are similar to In Cold Blood?
The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer (1979) is the closest. After it come The Adversary by Emmanuel Carrère (2000), I'll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara (2018) and Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe (2018). For the argument against this kind of book, read The Journalist and the Murderer by Janet Malcolm (1990).
Was In Cold Blood the first non-fiction novel?
Capote called it that and is usually credited with the form, but it had predecessors. John Hersey's Hiroshima (1946) told a true event through a few people in novelistic prose twenty years earlier, and the Argentine writer Rodolfo Walsh published Operación Masacre, a reconstruction of a real massacre, in 1957.
Is In Cold Blood accurate?
Not entirely. Capote said every word was true, but later reporting showed that some scenes were invented or reshaped, including the final scene in the cemetery, which never took place. The core facts of the murders, the investigation and the trial are accurate.
Which Truman Capote book should I read first?
In Cold Blood (1966) if you came for the true crime, or Breakfast at Tiffany's (1958) if you want his fiction. My guide to every Truman Capote book in order covers all twelve.
Were Truman Capote and Harper Lee friends?
Yes. They grew up next door to each other in Monroeville, Alabama, and each put the other in a book: Dill in To Kill a Mockingbird is based on Capote. Lee went with him to Kansas in December 1959 and helped with the interviews for In Cold Blood.
Footnotes
- In Cold Blood — Wikipedia
- Truman Capote, The Art of Fiction No. 17 — The Paris Review, 1957
- The Executioner's Song — Wikipedia
- The Journalist and the Murderer — Wikipedia
List last reviewed 5 October 2026.
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“…the whisper of wind voices in the wind-bent wheat.”
— Truman Capote, In Cold Blood (1966)
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