By the age of 21, Truman Capote was seen as the most promising young talent of 1945. His masterpiece, In Cold Blood, proved to be an amalgamation of his journalistic talent, his astute observations, and his skill at creating lifelike dialogue and characterizations. Learn more about Capote with this edition of Bloom's Modern Critical Views.
Plain Speaking - An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman
In 1995 Miller's most famous book, Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S Truman, became the focus of an intense controversy. That year Dr. Robert Ferrell, an historian who had published his own biography of Truman, asserted that Miller had fabricated many of the quotes in his book. In 1962, Miller had done a series of filmed interviews with former President Truman; his hope was to sell the interviews to a television network. When no network bought the rights, Miller printed the interviews in 1974 and turned them into the bestselling and influential Plain Speaking.
Truman's seventh, meatiest novel involves a group of blackguards, posing as prominent patriots in the nation's capital. One is Senator John Frolich whose young daughter Valerie, a journalism student, is murdered. Reporter Joe Potamos questions the victim's classmates and their instructor, George Bowen, a crony of the senator, and Marshall Jenkins, a politically powerful land developer.
The book opens with a bloody discovery: the corpse of a young soprano who has been skewered with a prop from the WNO's soon-to-premiere production of Puccini's Tosca. As the media swarm, the company sets up its own task force, and Annabel asks Mac to be involved. Life imitates opera, and suddenly all the performers seem to have something to hide: passions for one another, histories better left uncovered, and even connections to foreign terrorists.
Truman's latest mystery is set in the dazzling, fast-paced world of international art. Lawyer turned gallery owner (and occasional amateur sleuth) Annabel Reed-Smith is the nominal heroine in a story that moves from Washington's National Gallery, where money, power, and great art reign, to the seedy back alleys of Rome, which serve as home to art forgers and thieves.
