The Clutter family in a small town in Kansas in 1959

The Executioner's Song has as its background a book that is at the pinnacle of true crime novels. We are talking about In Cold Blood , by the writer and journalist Truman Capote (New Orleans, 1924-Los Angeles, 1984).



Capote began writing this book in 1959, but it Fax Lists was not published until 1966. The novel recounts the murder of the four members of the Clutter family in a small town in Kansas in 1959. The fact that the murdered family could be described as exemplary By the American social standards of the 1950s, it caused a great commotion nationwide.



The killers, Dick Hickock and Perry Edward Smith, represented the complete opposite. Both were paroled convicts who believed there was a significant amount of money in the Clutter home. In reality, it was not like that, but that did not matter and for lack of loot, they murdered the parents and their two teenage children.



Capote, accompanied by Harper Lee (the author of To Kill a Mockingbird ), traveled to the town where the murders took place, where he conducted dozens of interviews even before the murderers were captured. When Hickock and Smith were arrested, he had several meetings with both of them in jail to document his book.






The action of the following work takes place in Europe, more specifically in France. This is The Adversary , by Emmanuel Carrère (Paris, 1957-). This is a book that tells the amazing case of Jean-Claude Romand, a guy who on January 9, 1993 murdered his wife, his two children aged 5 and 7, and his parents and tried, unsuccessfully, to commit suicide.



One of the most incredible things about this case is that he was able to keep his family, friends and neighbors deceived for years, as he pretended to be a renowned medical official from the World Health Organization. When he said he was going to work, he actually stayed in highway parking lots at coffee shops until it was time to go home.