Holcomb, Kansas November 15, 1959


(Herbert, Bonnie, Nancy and Kenyon)

Four of the six members of the Clutter family were bound, gagged and murdered in their home. Herb and Bonnie and two of their four children-Nancy age 16 and Kenyon age 15. The family was well-liked within the community and was generally known for being “good people”.


Two parolees had heard that Mr. Clutter was a man of wealth and that he had a safe tucked away inside his home.


( Perry Edward Smith)


(Richard Hickcock)

These two men entered the Clutter home on the evening of November 15, 1959. They ended the life of those four people, leaving two surviving children that were not present on the night of the murder.

The town of Holcomb was left in terror that something so awful could happen in their quiet little neighborhood. The townsfolk could not fathom the murder of such innocent people for what appeared to be- no real reason.


Truman Capote was apparently “obsessed” with this murder and followed its trial closely. The movie, Capote, is an excellent one for any who are interested. This was the first book I have ever read by Mr. Capote and I am absolutely amazed with his writing.

This is a heartbreaking story reality. I continuously had to remind myself that these events were not made up; that this actually happened. This is a book that everyone should read; a book that will stay with me* through several lifetimes. It is a masterpiece through and through and I recommend this book to everyone. An incredible read despite its grim content.

*Thanks, Dan 2.0! ;)

Τα πέντε αστέρια δίνονται πρόθυμα, ειλικρινή και ένθερμα στο «Εν ψυχρώ», πρωτίστως για την εκπληκτική δουλειά του συγγραφέα και τον διακριτικό, ταπεινό, διεισδυτικό σεβασμό που χαρακτηρίζει την τεχνική ύφους και γραφής του βιβλίου.

Ακολουθεί μια σιωπηρή αξιοπρέπεια στην αφήγηση των γεγονότων χωρίς να αποστασιοποιείται απο την τραγωδία, δίχως επικλήσεις συναισθηματικών εξάρσεων, χωρίς επιτήδευση και μακριά απο την τυπική δημοσιογραφική προσέγγιση.
Ένα λογοτεχνικό έργο που δεν δείχνει, δεν προμηνύει το μακριά, το μέλλον, το μετά, μα εστιάζει στην ουσία της πραγματικής ιστορίας.
Καταφέρνει με αριστουργηματικό τρόπο να παραμένει αόρατη η μακρόχρονη έρευνα και επεξεργασία που έκανε πριν μας χαρίσει μια αληθινή αίσθηση εγκληματικής φαντασίας ως εν ψυχρώ εμπειρία.

Το βιβλίο αναφέρεται σε μια ανατριχιαστικά βάναυση δολοφονία μιας ευκατάστατης, αγροτικής οικογένειας, στο Κάνσας το 1959.
Οι δολοφόνοι, δυο περιθωριακοί, απλοί τυχοδιώκτες, θύτες και θύματα μιας αγιάτρευτης κοινωνικής ψυχοπαθογένειας.
Το κίνητρο τους αβάσιμο, το σκεπτικό τους ασταθές, το έγκλημα τους μοιραία και ανησυχητικά τυχαίο.
Η εξέλιξη γεγονότων και συμπτώσεων που προκαλούν τον αφανισμό της οικογένειας είναι μια λεπτή διαχωριστική γραμμή ανάμεσα στα πάντα,που φαίνονται και είναι κανονικά στην καθημερινότητα των ανθρώπων και στην απόλυτη καταστροφή, που χτυπάει ξαφνικά απο το πουθενά.

Ο θεμελιώδης σεβασμός είναι το στοιχείο που διεισδύει και μεταφέρεται σε όλο το βιβλίο.
Ο Καπότε σέβεται την οικογένεια των θυμάτων που τους σκιαγραφεί με απόλυτα κομψό άγγιγμα.
Αποδέχεται χωρίς μεγαλοστομίες την τοπική επιβολή των νόμων στην αγροτική περιοχή καθώς και τον τρόπο ζωής και σκέψης του λαού της.
Δείχνει βαθιά εκτίμηση σε κάθε ανθρώπινη ύπαρξη, σε θεσμούς και φορείς που συνθέτουν την λειτουργεία της κοινωνίας.
Ακόμη κι όταν αμφισβητεί τη δικαστική διαδικασία το κάνει σιωπηρά και όσο πιο αντικειμενικά θα άρμοζε στην αξιοπρέπεια.

Θαύμασα απεριόριστα το σπουδαίο ταλέντο της ενσυναίσθησης του συγγραφέα καθώς και την κατανόηση που εκφράζει όταν αναλύει τις ζωές των δολοφόνων.
Σε πρώτη φάση αφηγείται την πορεία των γεγονότων προς το έγκλημα με σαφήνεια, μα σε πιο βαθύ επίπεδο τα αφήνει όλα μυστήρια, αναπάντητα και ανεξήγητα αναφορικά με τις αιτίες που δημιουργούν έναν δολοφόνο.
Αίσθηση τραγωδίας διαπνέει την διαμόρφωση της ζωής τους, μα ο τελικός απολογισμός δείχνει καθαρά να σέβεται όχι το «ποιοι» ήταν οι δολοφόνοι αλλά το ποιοι θα «μπορούσαν» να είναι.

*Αξιοθαύμαστο*

Η απίστευτη λεπτομέρεια στην περιγραφή, τα στοιχεία που συνέθεσαν το αποτέλεσμα, το ίδιο το έγκλημα, οι δραστηριότητες των εμπλεκομένων στην υπόθεση ή των απλών παρατηρητών, καθώς και αναλυτικές συσχετίσεις με άλλα εγκλήματα εξίσου απεχθή και ανελέητα, αποκαλύπτουν την αξία του συγγραφέα.

Τίποτα δεν ακυρώνει το βασικό αίσθημα της τραγωδίας και το τελικό αποτέλεσμα ολοκληρώνεται με μια αιώνια σύγκρουση.
Η ρίζα του κακού είναι η μόνιμη φθονερή αντιπαράθεση δυο κόσμων που οριοθετούν την παγκόσμια κοινωνία.

Ο δυσλειτουργικός, βίαιος, στερημένος κόσμος των ασθενέστερων κοινωνικών στρωμάτων εκδικείται με αναδρομικά κατάλοιπα τους εκπροσώπους των τακτοποιημένων και ευκατάστατων κοινωνικών τάξεων που εκπροσωπούν επιτυχία και εξουσία.

Τελειώνοντας αφήνει την πικρή γεύση της ανασφάλειας και του φόβου στον αναγνώστη που μπορεί να ξεχωρίσει τους δυο κόσμους ... και να συμπεράνει ως εκ τούτου, πως, τέτοιου είδους μυστήρια πίσω απο αυτή την ιστορία, μένουν πάντα ανεξιχνίαστα.

Ό,τι παραμένει για πάντα ανεπίλυτο είναι προφανές πως μπορεί να επαναληφθεί και να εξελιχθεί με πιο δραματική βάση και ουσία.



Καλή ανάγνωση.
Πολλούς ασπασμούς.

Within the first pages of “In Cold Blood” Capote paints a picture of an ordinary, sleepy town of Holcomb, Kansas. The violent murders of an entire family in November, 1959, shocked the community, not only because the Clutters were a well-respected family, but because the crime seemed to lack any purpose.

Truman Capote’s work “In Cold Blood” has often been dubbed the “first true crime” nonfiction. I put this book off for years because true crime really isn’t my thing, and the disturbing subject of this book was something I really didn’t want to explore. I felt like I needed to be in the right frame of mind. I did recently pick this up and read it awhile back and, reflecting on it, I think that Capote does take the right approach in creating his book, maintaining a less-sensational, more journalistic approach.

Capote spends a good deal of time alternating between the perspectives of the Clutter family and those close to them and also following the movements of Perry Smith and Dick Hickcock. Capote does let us see into glimpse of who the Clutters were, and the loss that those of the Holcomb community felt at this awful and senseless murder. We see the reactions of those in this small community, and how they try to make sense of this case.

I also think Capote does an apt job of letting the story unfold to us, and showing various people and circumstances surrounding the Clutter murder case. The investigation into this, and Alvin Dewey’s relentless pursuit of these killers, was compelling. Compelling despite the fact that we know how everything will turn out before we even begin reading.

While the aftermath of the sentencing of the two killers puts some closure to this case, I really thought the last part of the novel, as we wait for Perry and Hickcock to be executed, was the least interesting. It also seemed like Capote was subtlety trying to create a little smudge of sympathy for the killers.

For the most part, though, I believe the Capote does an effective job maintaining his distance, and just letting the story tell itself.

In Cold Blood has been a true crime classic for nearly 60 years, and deservedly so. Still, let's acknowledge that it's a difficult read.

Part of the struggle, I think, is 1960s grammatical convention. This was still the era of long paragraphs. Many of Capote's paragraphs span multiple pages. Crammed in are varied thoughts, sources, and quotes. Editors now recognize this technique as cruel to the reader. More white space alone could transform tedious sections to riveting prose.

Capote's quotations are not as efficient as they could be. He opts for quoting extended conversations and documents seemingly in their entirety rather than weave the most important pieces into a clear narrative. The result is a fair amount of excess content and a jarring cacophony of voices. It takes a long time to fall into sync with this style. While I eventually "got" what he was doing, it still felt unnatural most of the time.

As a narrative, there's little sense of motion. We aren't trying to solve the mystery since we know right away who the killers are. We aren't trying to solve a motive, since that is revealed fairly early on too. I'm not sure how Capote could have structured it any better or more logically than he did, but modern true crime tends to unfurl information in a way that teases the reader and makes them more eager to turn the pages. Though intrigued, I never once salivated to learn more details about this crime. Likely that's why it took me months to finish reading rather than a few breathless sittings. I could have easily given up had I not felt so duty bound to check this classic off the list.

Negatives aside, there is still so much this book gets right that it would be silly to not call it a masterpiece. Capote's depiction of Kansas and its inhabitants is perfectly authentic. The killers too are revealed in all their complexity—a mix of personal hardships and hang-ups, and perhaps a touch of true evil. By the end, we feel as though we understand them, even if that understanding never quite extends to sympathy.

From a research perspective, there is the victory of being at the right place at the right time. Capote also clearly understood how seemingly minor details could become major within a greater context. Unless many of the quotes are fiction—which they may be—he went out of his way to interview every human even vaguely associated with this crime. Again, his focus on the people of the story shows great insight into what the real story of murder is. It's not just gory details, it's the lives who are impacted.

Knowing some of the historical backstory, there is extra satisfaction in reading between the lines. We know that Capote became personally infatuated with one of the murderers, Perry Smith. While "Capote" is not a character in the book, there are moments where we can imagine him there, interviewing the attractive killer. Smith, at times, comes across as a man hiding homosexual desire. Certainly he is given a more sympathetic gaze than his partner. How much of himself did Capote see in Perry Smith and how might that have influenced his rendering of him?

There's also the glorious image—not covered in the book—of flamboyantly gay Truman Capote gallivanting across rural Kansas with his gal pal Harper Lee, talking with judges and police officers and locals. It's hard for me to read this book and not find myself more interested in how it came to fruition. I've read some biographies on the subject, but they do not go into the amount of detail I dream of.

Another win for this book is that it was among the first of its kind. True Crime wasn't an established genre yet. Capote gave us the template for how to do it, and how to make it a bestseller. Like any trailblazing work of art, there's room for improvement. Still, aside from a few technique flaws, it holds up quite well.

Una excelente novela que aunque tenga su cuota de ficción, intenta principalmente documentar un hecho real, como lo fue el brutal crimen del matrimonio Clutter y sus dos hijos dentro de su propia casa en el tranquilo pueblo de Holcomb en Kansas en 1959, y la posterior investigación para encontrar a los culpables.
Son muchos los elementos que hacen de este clásico una novela fascinante, porque tiene una prosa ágil, un buen ritmo, las caracterizaciones de los personajes son perfectas y está tremendamente bien documentada; pero para mi hay dos elementos que destacan sobre el resto y que Capote supo combinar muy bien, y es que por un lado elabora una minuciosa crónica de todo lo referido al caso, desde como era la vida de los Clutter en la granja, el crimen y la posterior investigación, y por otro lado Capote indaga en lo mas profundo de la vida de los asesinos y pone el foco en su costado mas humano, mostrando lo desafortunada de sus vidas desde su infancia, la falta de recursos y oportunidades que tuvieron y como todo eso jugó un papel importante en la noche del crimen, sin que esto signifique victimizarlos o justificar los asesinatos.

Un libro más que recomendable que se disfruta de principio a fin, y que apenas baja un poco el ritmo sobre el final, donde el autor aprovecha para reflexionar sobre la pena de muerte más como venganza que como el justo castigo por un crimen.
4,5

n  “No tenía intención de hacerle daño alguno a aquel hombre. Pensé que era un hombre muy amable. De voz suave. Así lo creí hasta el momento en el que corté su cuello.”n

An absolute masterpiece of True Crime literature, In Cold Blood is both gritty and intelligent.



This should be on everyone's list of Books to Read in a Lifetime. Capote's writing in this account is absolutely flawless.

As many of you may know, In Cold Blood is a true account of the heinous murders of the Clutter Family in 1959-Kansas.



Through Capote's words, you are transported to this small town; you get alternating accounts from the family, the killers and from other individuals close to the crime.

The description of the night of the actual murders is bone-chilling and can disturb sleep, believe me!



This is my second time reading this book and I found it just as impactful during my reread.

To me, it is interesting to think about Capote investigating and compiling his research for the novel.



He actually went and lived in this town, along with one of his closest friends, Harper Lee, and they painstakingly interviewed hundreds of people associated with the events.

Just the sheer amount of data collected and how it was intricately woven into a cohesive narrative astounds me.



Yes, I know that is what nonfiction novelists do, but this was truly a ground-breaking piece of journalistic writing at the time and should be appreciated as such.

Another interesting aspect of this is how focused Capote was in the psychology behind the killers' motivations and actions, as well as their complex relationship with one another both before and after the crimes. Ahead of his time in that regard, in my opinion.



I think anyone who enjoys True Crime, Criminology, Psychology and even Sociology will find this book absolutely captivating.

If you have been putting off reading this for any reason, please stop, pick it up, NOW!!!

I am embarrassed to wait too long to read two brilliant true crime story novels : one of them is Helter Skelter and the other is of course this blood chilling, disturbing book I’m reviewing right now as I’m slapping my forehead. Sometimes I have hard time to prioritize my reading list and my chubby tbr may direct me wrong kind of books! But today I’m so happy to find my way to this classic after watching it’s amazing movie adaptation.

After four members of Herbert Clutter family were brutally killed in a small town named Holcomb located in Kansas, Mr. Capote decides to write an article about those murders by traveling to this small town just before the killers are caught.

He is accompanied by the one and only Harper Lee ( we realize they are childhood friends), making interviews with the locals who know about family history and police officers who are conducting the investigation. Six weeks later two perpetrators are finally convicted and executed in Kansas.

It’s quiet different nonfiction with its elaborated, long and detailed depictions. You want to skip those parts to focus on crimes and the trial process but you find yourself enjoy those chapters which are more like his short fiction stories than a nonfiction directly talking about the facts of crime.

Mr. Capote finish this book in six years and organize those thousands of pages interviews with people chronically. It was truly fascinating, unique classic. Especially loyal fans of true crime stories shouldn’t miss it! I’m so relieved to read at last!

My favorite quotes:
“Just remember: If one bird carried every grain of sand, grain by grain, across the ocean, by the time he got them all on the other side, that would only be the beginning of eternity.”

“Imagination, of course, can open any door - turn the key and let terror walk right in.”

“The enemy was anyone who was someone he wanted to be or who had anything he wanted to have.”

“Those fellows, they're always crying over killers. Never a thought for the victims.”

“In school we only learn to recognize the words and to spell but the application of these words to real life is another thing that only life and living can give us.”

In Cold Blood is one of my all-time favourite books, and this most recent reading must be about my sixth or seventh in the last 20 years. This time, however, I "read" the book by listening to the Random House unabridged audiobook edition, narrated by Scott Brick.

Truman Capote's writing is exquisite. He evokes mid-20th century rural America with a subtle beauty, despite the rather grim subject matter. Brick's narration only serves to highlight the subtle lyricism within Capote's prose.

On the night of Saturday 14-Sunday 15 November 1959, recent parolees Richard "Dick" Hickock and Perry Smith broke into the Holcomb, Kansas farmhouse of the Clutter family, with the expectation of robbing a large sum in cash from prosperous landowner Herb Clutter's safe. In fact, no such safe existed, and Hickock and Smith's robbery yielded only $40-$50 in cash and sundry personal items. Wishing to leave no witnesses, they murdered all four of the members of the Clutter family who were in the house that night - farmer Herb Clutter, his invalid wife Bonnie, their daughter Nancy, aged 16, and son Kenyon, aged 15.

A day later, novelist Truman Capote read a short account of the murders in the New York Times, and was inspired to travel to Kansas and follow the story. The result was his masterpiece In Cold Blood, a work he described as a "non-fiction novel". Unlike many true-crime titles, which tend to simply recount facts, this work follows a clear narrative arc, as the story unfolds from the days prior to the murders to the ultimate dispensation of justice six years later, told from the perspectives of the victims, their friends and neighbours, the perpetrators and the various agents of the KBI and justice system who captured and tried Smith and Hickock.

In Cold Blood is masterful in its balance and division of pathos between the undeserving victims and one of the killers, Perry Smith, within whom Capote glimpsed an untapped intelligence and sensitivity. In addition to the account of the Clutter murders and their aftermath, In Cold Blood also contains a persuasive criminological argument as to the inadequacies of the M'Naghten rules in assessing criminal culpability. There was substantial evidence, which was not admissable at trial, that Hickock suffered from a frontal-lobe brain injury and Smith from a serious personality disorder when they committed the crimes. While not absolving them of criminal liability, modern laws would almost certainly have allowed both defendants to have presented compelling evidence of diminished responsibility.

Truman Capote's time in Kansas researching for In Cold Blood with the aid of his good friend Nell Harper Lee have been dramatised in recent years, in the films "Capote" and "Infamous". However, Capote hasn't included himself as a character in his own book, despite the relationships he built with investigators, Hickock and, to a greater extent, Perry Smith - however astute readers will occasionally detect his shadow in the text as "a journalist" or "a friend".

The book has been controversial since its publication, especially amongst the surviving members of the Clutter family and the residents of Holcomb and Garden City, Kansas, as Capote unashamedly invented or conflated certain characters and events. For example, the poignant final scene of the book, in which KBI Special Agent Dewey meets and converses with Nancy Clutter's closest friend - and one of the girls who stumbled onto the scene of the murders that Sunday morning - Susan Kidwell, at the Clutters' graveside, was entirely Capote's invention, and yet it finishes the novel so beautifully... He also clearly embellished the language and expression used by Smith in his many soulful soliliquies. It raises a difficult question - where does the line fall between journalistic reporting of "the facts", which are after all only ever a perspective, and a fictionalised re-telling of a story based on a real series of events?

In Cold Blood is deservedly a modern American classic, and arguably the best writing Truman Capote ever produced. It remains an enthralling, evocative and thought-provoking read, over 60 years since the events that inspired it. I can't recommend it highly enough, but I do recognise that the subject matter won't be every reader's cup of tea.

**Re-read 2024, starting on the 65th anniversary of the Clutter Family Murders, 14 November 1959. RIP

Spook-A-Thon: Read a book with a spooky word in the title

I read In Cold Blood for the first time when I was in high school and I though it was okay. It didn't really do anything for me. But then again I wasn't really into True Crime back then and I think I preferred a snappier more fast paced writing style.

Rereading In Cold Blood as an adult whose reading style and interests have changed. I loved this book. I totally get the hype. I agree with the people who say this book is a masterpiece because it is.

With In Cold Blood Truman Capote invented modern True Crime. I'm sure there had been True Crime books before but In Cold Blood took it to a completely new level.

On November 15, 1959 in the small town Holcomb, Kansas four members of the Clutter family Herb Clutter is wife Bonnie and their two children Kenyon(15) and Nancy(16) were savagely murdered. Capote exhaustively reconstructs the crime and the hunt for the killers. In doing so he befriends the two killers and attempts to humanize them without ever making and excuses for their disturbing crime.

This book is hard to read at times. Truman Capote is a masterful writer who pulls no punches when describing in vivid detail every brutal detail.

A must read!

I do not, as I have said many a time, feel things very often. I am just shy of being a sociopathic monster, mainly because I consider myself to be way too cute and charming for that. (Except sociopaths are capable of charm...huh. Back to the drawing board.)

Anyway. Even in my actual, real life, I try to experience emotions as infrequently as possible. This is only truer for the books I read.

In Cold Blood is a true crime narrative detailing the crime, investigation, and trial related to the murder of four members of the Clutter family, and therefore I wasn’t planning on feeling anything if at all possible. Because, duh, emotions related to that aren’t exactly going to be the equivalent of “eating cotton candy while at the top of a Ferris wheel at a fair in the beginning of summer” or “hearing an infant laugh for the first time.”

And yet, by page 50, Truman Capote had me feeling overwhelmingly fond of the Clutter family.

I knew what was going to happen to them. Even if I hadn’t known the book’s synopsis going in, I would have felt the building tension.

Somehow, though, even though I knew what was coming, I was really hoping the Clutters would be okay.

Mr. Clutter, the tenet of his community. Mrs. Clutter, who finally felt she might be overcoming her lifelong struggle with mental health. Nancy, the sweet, kind teenager who overbooked herself because she didn’t want to say no to anybody. Kenyon, nerdier than his older sister, but smart and kind and passionate.

As I read about their lives on and before November 15, 1959, I hoped they would be okay. Even as Perry Smith and Dick Hickock entered their home late at night, I hoped they would somehow leave a survivor.

What I expected out of this book was an exciting, impressive rendering of a horrible crime. I got a lot more. I was made to care about these people, and to feel their loss. I empathized with their loved ones, their community, their police force. I could have read about the Clutters for much longer than I did.

Unfortunately, the Clutters and the crime itself only took up about a third of the book. The remaining two thirds followed the investigation and the trial, but more than that, it followed the killers.

I felt no pity for Dick Hickock. I don’t think I was supposed to, or I hope I wasn’t. Because that guy was a piece of total sh*t. I’m someone who believes that people can be partially exonerated by their circumstances, but Dick Hickock had no circumstance that could make up for what a f*cker he was.

Perry Smith, on the other hand. Even for him, who suffered all his life, I was only able to feel partial pity. A sickening kind of pity - it nauseated me to read about him.

Maybe if this book felt more focused on the Clutters, I would have given it five stars. I don’t know. It’s still a four star read because it’s so impressive. It’s no wonder that this book to some extent birthed the genre of true crime as it is today. The exhaustive research and attention to detail is pretty much astonishing, and the writing is for the most part beautiful.

But the later parts of the narrative were sickening, and hard and unpleasant to read. Not just for their content, but for the treatment of the people it followed. I don’t know. It felt like it strayed a lot from the Clutters. Maybe it wasn’t ever supposed to be their story - maybe it was Perry and Dick’s all along. But I’d prefer to think it wasn’t.

Bottom line: I love true crime. I love classics. This feels outside of both of those genres. Genre-defying. I don’t even know what it is. It’s good. Hopefully that’s enough.


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PRE-REVIEW

i am so glad that i'm sticking to my plan of reading a classic a month. (i'm so proud of myself you'd never guess it's THE SECOND MONTH OF THE YEAR.)

i always forget how much i love classics until i pick them up??? they're classic for a reason.

whatever. i digress. this is a great book and i'll review it at some point hurray

I thought to myself, do I need to write another review for one of the best true crime books ever written? And then I thought, yeah, you do. You’ve written reviews on terrible, stupid and boring books and a book this good, it definitely deserves another one. This is the best story about true crime that I have ever read. Hands down.

After painting a peaceful scene in the Midwest plains of America, evil makes it's presence felt. This is how the book starts and Truman Capote’s writing had my blood chilled and my heart sad for the victims.

It is about the murders in 1959 of the Clutter family at their farmhouse in Holcomb, Kansas. The four murders received a ton of media attention, as the motive was unclear. Two recently released convicts, seeking a fortune that did not exist, invade the Clutter family home, tie up the four family members present and leave no witnesses.

For the reader, Capote’s vision was gripping and his outtake on the crime was fantastic. His character study was almost a biography. The killers were still impulsive and cruel, but he got into their minds and made them seem more human.

Capote took an actual event, a gruesome crime, and used his writing to bring it to life. The sad truth is that if he had not written In Cold Blood, no one outside of Holcomb, Kansas would know who the Clutter family is or the killers, Perry Smith and Dick Hickock. The murders and the execution effectively ended all of their lives but Truman Capote gave them all immortality in this amazing book.

Этот почти документальный роман, восстанавливающий события, предшествовавшие и последовавшие после жесточайшего убийства пользовавшегося большим уважением семейства Клаттер, написан в стиле газетной полицейской хроники – скупой язык, только факты, изложение в хронологической последовательности, внимание деталям – все это создает эффект присутствия. Он был бы совершенно заурядным, если бы не стал своеобразной «энциклопедией» канзасской жизни в конце 1950-х – начале 1960-х, позволяющей погрузиться в жизнь американского провинциального городишки. Трумен Капоте дает нам детальные психологические портреты, как убитых – Герба Клаттера, преуспевающего фермера, прирожденного лидера, его жены Бонни, страдающей депрессией и рядом других заболеваний, в силу которых она почти все время проводит в постели, их юной красавицы-дочери Нэнси, обожавшей свою лошадь и встречавшейся в Бобом и сына-подростка Кениана, так и убийц – Дика Хикока и Перри Смита. Общество потрясло и масштаб, и особая жестокость убийства, и мелочь, которая была украдена – немного денег и радиоприемник. Я помню, как наше общество также было потрясено убийством прославленного спортсмена, бронзового олимпийского призера Дениса Тена мелкими автомобильными воришками, зарезавшими его при краже зеркал с его автомобиля.
В отличие от большинства детективов, роман Капоте не заканчивается поимкой преступников, он с такой же документальной точностью воспроизводит суд, а также последние годы, дни и часы перед исполнением приговора – смертной казни через повешение (для меня было открытием, что этот средневековый способ казни, заставляющий мучиться казненного 20 минут, был еще в ходу в середине двадцатого века). Эта часть романа не менее жестока, чем часть об убийстве. Капоте поднимает и гуманитарную проблему – правильно ли в нашем цивилизованном обществе жить по принципу «око за око», насколько оправдана смертная казнь пусть даже и за особо жестокое убийство? Но на мой вкус, это не лучшее произведение Капоте.