In Cold Blood remains one of the 100 greatest novels of the twentieth century, a study of crime and a polemic against capital punishment that is without peer. Truman Capote purportedly considered it the "first nonfiction novel," ushering in the era of New Journalism, as defined by Tom Wolfe. It also was the catalyst for a century of crime reporting in America, and crime coverage is by definition popular, involving heightened dramatic conflict, human...