Bestselling author Lesley M.M. Blume documents the frenzied race to write the definitive account of the Manson murders—a race that included the likes of literary icons Truman Capote and Joan Didion.

A decade after Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood took the literary world by storm and made Capote a star, another series of murders shook America to its core: the Manson murders. The trial is most famously depicted in Vincent Bugliosi’s Helter Skelter—but lesser known are the books that were almost written.

Bugliosi wasn’t the only writer looking to pen the definitive account of the Manson trial. There was Truman Capote himself, looking to cement his literary legacy as the authority on crime writing; there was Joan Didion, fresh off the success of Slouching Towards Bethlehem; and there were the countless reporters hoping to make their mark—and their fortune—by any means necessary. What ensued was a professional race to the top, and a moral race to the bottom.

A Devil’s Bargain documents that feverish, high-stakes race for the ultimate publishing blood prize, and those willing to give up almost everything—even putting their lives on the line—to pursue it. It’s an origin story of true crime as we know it, and a portrait of an indelible moment in American literary and cultural history.