"In Cold Blood," Truman Capote's masterpiece, caused a great sensation when it was first published in 1966. The atmospheric narrative, "the result of intensive research," of the life of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas, and the alternating chronicle of the two men (Richard Eugene Hickock and Perry Edward Smith), who murdered all four members of the family on the night of November 15, 1959, is the first work in the so-called new journalism movement. Perry Smith is one of the great "dark" characters of American literature, full of contradictory feelings. "I found him to be a very likable person, kind, a real gentleman," Smith says of Herb Clutter. "I continued to believe that until I cut his throat." With chapters describing the daily life of the Clutters alternating with the black Chevrolet of their murderers approaching ever closer and a parallel narrative of the perpetrators' escape and the manhunt that ensued, Capote's testimony is so detailed that the reader feels they are participating in the tumultuous events of the story.