In Cold Blood

This is my first Capote book and I wasn't disappointed. He has a style best called a page turner. Without confusion he lets the reader progress forward as real events unfold, adds history of an event, and then brings you back in real time. Some writers try this montage effect and only create confusion. Capote weaves the two together and allows the reader to process the sequence of events. Very clever, very readable and a very satisfying read. Would recommend this to any first time Capote reader and you don't have to be an intellectual to enjoy it.

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote was published in 1966, and is based on events that happened almost fifty years ago. The events were real. This is not a work of fiction. The Clutters, an appropriately surnamed Kansas family, have their own complications within their rambling homestead. What family doesn't? Clutter the father is a farmer. Who isn't in these parts? Life is not so productive of late. Whose is? The two younger children, a daughter and a son, still live in. The others have left, happily.

And then, in November 1959, the four Clutters are found gagged, apart from the mother, all with their throats cut and their brains blown out by shotgun fire. The community is in turmoil. No-one can explain why anyone might have wanted to kill a whole family in Holcomb, a small, poor, rural community in the mid-West Bible belt.

Hickock (Hicock) and Smith are two lads on the move. Their families might be dysfunctional. On the other hand they might not. Their socialisation might have been lacking. On the other hand it might not. For whatever reason, individually and collectively they prey on others, prey in a way that renders them culpable, detectable and ultimately punishable. They know thieving is wrong. So, one of them says, we've stolen lives, so it must be serious. It was the two of them that pulled the trigger, that blew brains out, that slit throats, that did not quite commit rape. There are limits. And all for forty dollars and a transistor radio.

I give nothing of this book away when I reveal that the two lads did commit the murders - exactly how no-one ever admitted - and that, after years of litigious wrangling, both were hanged. The strength of In Cold Blood is not what happens, but how it happens.

Truman Capote offers us a vast book in just four sustained chapters, each of which is sub-divided as the narrative shifts between aspects of the different protagonists' lives. Throughout, the style is much more complex than mere journalism, but the clarity with which it communicates is at times breathtaking. We hear from those directly involved, both victims and perpetrators, their families, the police, the judiciary, the neighbours, the lawyers, the passers-by, the acquaintances, the cellmates. The detail is forensic.

It is essential that the reader is constantly reminded that this is not fiction. Truman Capote offers dialogue where a journalist would report, offers interpretation where an historian would defer, offer opinion where an observer might decline. And so In Cold Blood becomes and absorbing, multi-faceted, mid-twentieth century reworking of Crime And Punishment. The crucial difference that the intervening years have generated is that where the latter concentrated on the individual circumstances and motives of the perpetrator, In Cold Blood explores the social and the contextual alongside the psychological.

And this is where the book becomes deeply disturbing, because it seems to suggest that the individuality that contemporary society seems to demand of us might itself promote a degree of self-centredness, of selfishness, perhaps, that might give rise to nothing less than contempt for others. In the forty years since the publication of In Cold Blood, it could be argued that such pressures might have increased. Frightening, indeed.

Just finished this book and had to write a review for it. It's been years since I've read a book that is so difficult to put down! This was my first book by Capote and I just ordered 2 more by him. It's amazing that this is a true story and Capote is brilliant with his presentation of this gruesome crime story.

Truman Capote may have been a dwarfish freak-show with a ridiculous voice...but the guy knew how to write. This is an excellent book. Not what I'd call a "masterpiece" along the lines of Lolita, but certainly right up there with Tom Wolfe's best.

It's a book which you should read, and which you'll have no trouble finishing. It may not be 100% factually accurate, but the level of the prose is top-flight, and the pages seemingly turn of their own accord. You can tell Capote spent six years working on it, getting it "just right."

There really isn't much more to say...except that its omission from the MLA 100--a list including such dreck as On the Road--is outrageous.

because there should be dozens if not hundreds of reviews for IN COLD BLOOD, which was an enormous bestseller when it debuted in 1966 and has enjoyed steady sales ever since as the exemplary -- and probably best -- "true crime" book.

I know I reviewed the book years ago in its trade paperback version and since Amazon appears not to have put such prior reviews here as well, I'd refer you to prior editions for the reviews.