The town of Holcomb, lost among the endless Kansas fields, might have remained an unremarkable American backwater—if not for one November morning in 1959.
That morning, the farmer Herbert Clutter, his wife, and their children were found tied up and shot at point-blank range in their own home. A crime of this scale was loud even by the standards of the entire country. From the very beginning, the investigation threatened to go nowhere—because the Clutters simply had no enemies, and not even any ill-wishers…