n  n

PART 1: STEVE’S REVIEW

4.0 to 4.5 stars. Written over a period of 7 years and published in 1966, this novel, while not technically the first “true crime” non-fiction novel, is credited (correctly) with establishing the genre and being the progenitor of today's true crime novel. I would certainly agree that most of the other true crime novels that I have read followed almost the exact "blue print" laid out by Capote in this book. That is quite a testament to the technical excellence of this novel.

The book recounts the story of the brutal murders in Holcomb, Kansas of a farmer named Herb Clutter, his wife and their two children. The book spends the early pages going back and forth between introducing the reader to the Clutter family and also to the two murderers, Perry Smith and Dick Hickock. I thought Capote did a superb job of allowing the reader to “get to know” the Clutter family (and the killers for that matter) so that impact of the actual murders would resonate more deeply.

Overall, I thought the job that Capote did of laying out the story in the sequence that he did was masterful. By following the structure that he did he was able to keep the narrative tension high throughout the entire novel. This is a difficult task to accomplish when both the nature of the crime itself and the eventual fate of the perpetrators are known before you even pick up the book. However, Capote pulls it off and for that he deserves much credit.

The novel is also much more comprehensive than just a detailed restatement of the murders. The book spends considerable time showing the effect the killings had on the Holcomb community and how different people responded to the event both postively and negatively. It follows the killers, both leading up to the murders and also during their time in hiding afterwards. Further, it recounts the actions of the police and the manhunt that eventually led to the capture of Smith and Hickock. Lastly, Capote spends considerable time on the trial of the two killers as well as the effect the trial and its aftermath had on the people most closely involved with the case.

Overall, I thought the book was just about perfect in its execution. The critical events are detailed and fully-fleshed out without excess padding over the book’s 400 pages. I thought it was very interesting to discover that Capote produced almost 8000 pages worth of transcripts, notes and commentary from which he then distilled the final product. This certainly highlights the painstaking research Capote did and the unprecedented access he was given to the events and people surrounding this tragedy.

An amazing achievement and one that I HIGHLY RECOMMEND people read.

PART 2: STEVE’S CONFESSION

I only gave this book 4.0 to 4.5 stars. I feel weird saying “only” when the rating means I more than really liked it (call it really, really, super duper liked it). It just wasn’t memorable enough for me to give it 5 stars. Sadly, I think this says more about me than it does about the merits of the book. The recounting of the killings just did not have the emotional impact on me that I think, in all fairness, they should have. I guess you could say that I was shocked to find myself “not shocked” by the recounting of the murders.

Unfortunately, having grown up in a world that has been witness to horrors so far beyond the tragic events described in the novel, the slayings did not evoke the kind of visceral reaction that I would have expected. A contributing factor to this may be that at the same time as I was listening to this book on audio, I was reading Jack Ketchum’s Off Season and DRACULAS by J.A. Konrath et al, two of the goriest books I have ever read. The horrors recounted in Capote’s novel came across as very PG to PG-13. Again, that is both a sad and scary thing to realize just how “comfortable” you can become reading, watching or hearing about crimes like this one. I think this last comment leads nicely into the next section.

PART 3: STEVE’S RANT

Have the horrors of the world today really become so fucking “over the top” extreme that they have numbed me to the point where reading about the pre-meditated, unprovoked murder of a family of four doesn’t quite have the requisite “shock value” to immediately cause bile to rise in the back of my throat. In all honesty, YES!! In fact, I believe that as horrific as the killings were they would barely be a two minute headline on the evening news today. When you really stop to think about it, how catastrophically and dementedly fucked up is that!!

The truth is that nowadays events like the Clutter family killings happen all too often. In fact, it's possible that if the murders happened today they might go completely ignored by everyone except the local news where they occurred. Sadly, when on any given day we might be hearing about some troubled teen going “Columbine” on his classmates because some douche bag tripped him in the lunch room or reading about some disgruntled worker deciding that the boss who fired him doesn’t deserve to live and so proceeds to kill a dozen of his former co-workers because they are in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Don’t take my comments as advocating the curtailment of ANY form of entertainment being made today whether it be books, movies, music, video games or TV shows. NO, NO, No and please NO!! I like and love my violent, over the top, blood-soaked books, graphic novels and even TV shows (pause for a big shout out to Dexter). Now I could do without most of the real gory, slasher type films but hey, to each their own.

So this is not about advocating change in what we watch or read (I certainly have no plans to change). I am simply recognizing the fact that as a society we have fallen down the “rabbit hole” and are living in a fucked up, violent, blood-soaked world that tears at our empathy on a daily basis. It is just something that many of us (myself included) seem to have become all too comfortable with it. Whether its loving us some Tony Soprano (and c’mon how can you not) or laughing as we shoot hookers during a game of Grand Theft Auto (I would note without further comment the current serial killings involving prostitutes) or hearing about another 5 dead American soldiers killed by a roadside bomb and then casually changing the channel to get back to the ball game so you can put it out of your mind.

This is us. We have become the world that Cormac McCarthy envisioned in No Country for Old Men and, like Sheriff Tom Bell in McCarthy’s novel, I think it would be impossible for the people of Capote’s time to imagine the world as it is today.

I am not sure what, if anything, all this says about us or me, but there you have it. Rant over, review concluded.

إن كل الجرائم ليست سوى/ تنويعات من السرقة/ بما في ذلك جريمة القتل. حين تقتل رجلًا، فأنت تسرق حياته. أعتقد أن هذا يجعلني لصًا كبيرًا. أنظر، أنا قتلتهم. … أتساءل لماذا فعلت أنا ذلك”. “هل أنا آسف؟ كلا. لا أشعر بشيء من هذا. أتمنى لو كنت. لكن لا شيء في هذا يثقل عليّ بوزن قشة. القاتل “بيري سميث”.


قصة حقيقية عن جريمة قتل وقعت في أمريكا في ولاية كنساس عام 1959. كان ضحيتها أربع أفراد من عائلة واحدة. تمت الجريمة دون سبب، دون دافع للإنتقام أو للقتل. هذه الرواية الحقيقية كانت سبب شهرة الكاتب ترومان كابوتي.

Between 3.5-4****.

”I thought that Mr. Clutter was a very nice gentleman. I thought so right up to the moment that I cut his throat.”

This is one of Capote’s most famous works. The non-fiction, true crime account, of the quadruple murder of the Clutter Family in the small town of Garden City, in Holcomb, Kansas. This book gives a comprehensive account of the investigation of the slaying of this family.

Capote compiled over 8,000 pages of notes, along with interviews of those who were part of the investigation, the towns people and the murderers. He went into humongous amounts of detail of research into these murders, presenting a horrific crime that readers ever since have studied and pondered over.

Capote’s writing is broken up into sections of a timeline of the murders. It consecutively follows: the family before the crime, after the crime and the investigation, the court case, and death row. Capote simultaneously provides a triple narrative from those of the investigators POV, townspeople POV and the murderers POV. Due to his thorough research, Capote was able to humanise all of the victims and provide a back story and personality to the Clutter family, and bring the importance and remembrance of a family that may be overlooked as just of being known as a “mass killing” - he gives them a voice.
In addition, Capote also gives character and humanises the officers and investigators in charge of the crime, their home life and personality, and the steps of the crime procedure they had to go through to gain the eventual arrests of Dick Hickcock and Perry Smith.

In particular to this novel, Capote payed true attention to he psychology of both murderers, how this effected their relationship to each other and their approach in the crime. He payed particular attention to their home lives and what they were like growing up, providing possible influencers of their social situations to lead them to committing this crime.
I would have particularly liked to have seen how a thorough psychological analysis (which had happened and Capote thoroughly accounts of this, but was consequently not brought up in court) would have possibly effected any trial decisions.

Overall this book was a fascinating true crime piece of work and was so detailed and well-researched, providing accounts and important narratives to a multitude of people, and how a vicious crime and subsequent investigation effects the lives of those involved.

The reason why I have given this 3.5-4 stars is that I found some parts almost too dramatised or unneeded.

As an English reader I had not heard of the Clutter massacre, and all I knew about Truman Capote was his novel "Breakfast at Tiffany's". It took a while before I recognised this novel as truly great. The 1950's domesticity did not appeal to me. It seemed alien, claustrophobic, gender-specific and rather dull. But after a while I realised the genius in describing the setting of this time and place to the minutest detail.

The "New York Times" calls In Cold Blood

"The best documentary account of an American crime ever written."

It is a ground-breaking book by Truman Capote, generally agreed to be the first factual novel, although others had explored the idea before. It is about the murders in 1959 of the Clutter family at their farmhouse in Holcomb, Kansas. The four murders received a lot of media attention, as the motive was unclear. Partly because of this Capote and his friend author Harper Lee decided to travel to Kansas to write about the crime before the killers were apprehended. They painstakingly interviewed all the local residents and investigators, taking numerous notes which Capote subsequently worked into his novel over the next six years.

The killers, Dick Hickock and Perry Smith were arrested six weeks after the murders, but Capote does not start at that point; not at the point of the actual slayings for dramatic effect, as many writers would. He starts by describing the comfortable, happy family lives of devout Christian people living in the small town of Holcomb down to the smallest detail. Their daily lives, the aspirations of both old and young, the clinical depression of Bonnie Clutter (the mother, Herbert's wife) are all carefully set down. Carefully woven into the narrative, Capote also writes a dispassionate account of the killers' early childhoods, recording the highlights and events which in retrospect seem shocking in the extreme, but are so meticulously recorded by Capote that they form a non-judgmental picture.

It is the juxtaposition made by Capote which means that the reader assesses the situation for themselves. The impoverished and brutal early childhood (some of the cruellest episodes ironically were perpetrated by nuns) of Perry Smith contrasts sharply with the settled happy community who had been devastated by the event. First hand accounts from the residents are included. Most were fearful; all were stunned and confused. Some bent on revenge, some on forgiveness. Every single one in this church-going community seemed to want to do the Right Thing, though they differed as to what that was.

The feelings - the stress and deteriorating health of investigators involved - became more intense as the search went on. Truman increases the feeling of suspense as the search continued whilst making us more familiar with the two characters who had perpetrated it, so we are familiar with both Perry Smith's abusive childhood and Dick Hickock's head injuries and possible brain trauma following a car crash in 1950. At no point however does the author comment on such episodes; he remains impartial. He does not really need to. The reader now has ample material to make subtle inferences as to how responsible for their actions these two could be.

The actual murders are recorded about halfway through the book, and the following 6 weeks where they were on the run is chronicled as a time when the relationship between the two was breaking down. Here are the thoughts of Dick Hickock, as he envisages setting off on his own, as set down by Capote.

"Goodbye, Perry. Dick was sick of him - his harmonica, his aches and ills, his superstitions, the weepy womanly eyes, the nagging, whispering voice. Suspicious, self-righteous, spiteful he was like a wife that must be got rid of."

In turn Perry Smith is beginning to wonder why he ever admired Dick Hickock, who takes a delight in running over stray dogs and prefers to steal even when they do have money in their pockets. Both are coming across as extremely damaged personalities, before we ever get to any formal psychiatric analysis.

The pair were eventually tracked down by the evidence of a former cell-mate Floyd Wells. Having himself worked for Herbert Clutter he chatted to Dick Hickock about how well off this Methodist family were, giving details of the farmhouse, habits of the family, whether they had a safe etc. When he saw the subsequent use Dick Hickock had made of the information he told the police. (He claimed that although Hickock had stated to him that he would kill all the family, such boasts were so common in prison as to be meaningless. In addition, there was a reward for information.)

There was enough other evidence to convict the pair - photographs made of bloody shoe prints which had been invisible to the naked eye, a radio which had been stolen from the house at the time of the attack and subsequently sold ... It seems precious little evidence to present-day readers used to DNA analysis etc, but coupled with the evidence given by the prisoners later, as to where they had disposed of the weapons etc, this was enough at the time.

Capote uses the statements made by both prisoners (who were kept separate so that there could be no collaboration) to describe these horrific events. By this clever device the part of the novel which could have been almost unbearable to read takes on a clinical feel. It is never sensationalist or gratuitous. These are the killers' own words.

At this point the complex psychological relationship between the men comes more into prominence. We already feel we know these men; we know perhaps some of the reasons why they were able to do what they did. It is becoming poignantly clear that what sparked the actual events was the complex relationship between the two, who in turn relied on each other, admired each other, hated each other ... Here is a quote from Perry Smith to detective Dewey,

"Then he says to me as we're heading along the hall towards Nancy's room, "I'm gonna bust that little girl." And I said, "Uh-huh. But you'll have to kill me first"….that's something that I despise. Anybody that can't control themselves sexually."

And again, most revealingly as picked up by a psychologist later,

"I didn't want to harm the man. I thought he was a very nice gentleman. Soft-spoken. I thought so right up to the moment I cut his throat."

And of Dick Hickock, "I meant to call his bluff… I didn't realise what I'd done til I heard the sound. Like somebody drowning…. Dick panicked….I couldn't leave him like he was…. Then I aimed the gun."

Dick Hickock also shared this antagonism against his partner, but it was only later when his former cellmate Floyd Wells was called as witness, that Capote says, with a flash of insight he realised he was not as dangerous as Perry. "Suddenly he saw the truth. It was Perry he ought to have silenced."

Capote states that Alvin Dewey, the investigator most involved with this case considered that the two versions of the killings were very much alike. But he concluded that the confessions of how and why failed to satisfy his sense of meaningful design. The crime was a psychological accident, virtually an impersonal act. The actual amount of money stolen was between 40 and 50 dollars.

The lead up to the trial, as everything else, is carefully documented. The choice of legal representation, of the judge, of the jurors. One potential juror said, when asked his opinion of capital punishment, that he was ordinarily against it, but in this case, no. Yet he was still allocated to the jury. There were no qualified psychiatrists within Garden City, where the trial held. The prosecuting attorney referred to the profession as a

"pack of head-healers" sympathetic to the defendants. "Those fellows, they're always worrying over the killers. Never a thought for the victims….. Our own local physicians attend to the matter. It's no great job to find whether a man is insane or an idiot or an imbecile."

Whereas the defending counsel said, "Whatever their crime, these men are entitled to examination by persons of training and experience… Psychiatry has matured rapidly in the last twenty years."

Listening to both sides, the judge acted strictly within law, appointing 3 Garden City doctors, despite the fact that the unpaid services of a qualified psychiatrist experienced in such cases had been offered.

Details from the trial stick in the memory. The testimony of Dick Hickock's father, who was seriously ill at the time (he died months later) but was mocked by the prosecuting attorney for getting the dates of the car accident which led to his son's head injuries and subsequent personality change wrong. One eminent psychiatrist had been called as a defence witness. However the judge only allowed him a yes/no answer to the question, could he could state that the defendants knew the difference between right and wrong. He answered "Yes" in respect of the first one, then was dismissed. No further comment was allowed. Presumably faced with an impossible question to answer in those terms he then answered "No" to the question when put about the second accused. Again, no further elucidation was allowed by the judge, as this was perfectly allowable under Kansas law.

Capote goes on to quote the psychiatrist's prepared analysis, after his examinations of the defendants, which presents a much fuller picture. The conditions described after several intensive interviews he had had with the killers use terms which are more familiar to modern readers - organic brain damage from the accident, schizophrenia and dissociative behaviour, where an individual suddenly finds himself destroying some key figure in his past, who may be unclear to him. They may well have been new concepts to the jurors who were in the main farming people, but they were not privy to this crucial information in any case.

Although the ending of the trial is a foregone conclusion, the actual execution of Dick Hickock and Perry Smith did not take place for a further 5 years. Capote explains that in the US judicial system it is possible to appeal several times, and that this is common practice. He spends a further part of the novel in describing the characters and crimes committed by various other inmates on Death Row. Interestingly, this part of the novel is not as objective as the rest. Capote's feelings begin to impose more. Perhaps it did not seem as important to be scrupulously impartial as these cases were not crucial to the main text. What it does do for the reader however, is to create a feeling of the suspension of reality - a reflection of the interminable waiting that the prisoners must have felt in their turn.

The execution by hanging, the witnesses, the quiet behaviour of the killers is all described. And a final short scene is added which is pure fiction, where Alvin Dewey goes to the graves of the Clutter family and meets one of the children's close friends, now an adult. This I found quite allowable as a coda. It ties up the ends nicely, and I am not sure how else Capote could have done this, without inserting his views in a summing-up, which clearly he did not want to do.

This novel is not only ground-breaking but superbly crafted; a pretty near perfect novel. The continual switch between present and past tenses only serves to give a more immediate feel; an edge to the narration. My star rating? Well, I cannot say, I "like it", (3 or 4 stars) but I can say, "It was amazing!" Five stars.

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!!!

Question : IS THERE SUCH A THING AS FATE?

Answer : no, but there are things that happen that could convince a person that there was.

Like this…

In 1959 two guys doing short stretches in Lansing (aka Kansas State Penitentiary) are sharing a cell and like all cons they talk about their lives and maybe cook up a plan or two for some future malfeasance. This one guy, Floyd, is telling Dick, the cellmate, about maybe the best job he ever had, which was working on a big old wheat farm in Kansas for a real rich farmer. He particularly remembers this farmer because he was such a kindly employer. Farm was way out in the middle of nowhere. Oh says Dick, rich? Oh yeah, maybe every week they did ten thousand dollars of business. Hey, says Dick, did you happen to see a safe in that farm house ever? Well, says Floyd, I kind of sort of remember there was something. All right, says Dick, I will rob this farmer, and I will shoot all the witnesses. Well, in jail, everybody brags on the great deeds they will do, what else is there to yap about. Floyd discounted this big talk.

In fact there was no safe at all, there was no cash kept in the farmhouse. Floyd got that part wrong, what a shame. So when Dick and his good friend Perry crept into the said farmhouse a few months later, all they found was thirty bucks. But they’d already agreed there would be no witnesses left, whatever happened, so they shot all four members of the Clutter family that night and left. And they were careful and there were no clues.

Imagine Floyd’s surprise when a couple of days later, him being still in the jail, he hears on the radio about this terrible crime. He about jumped out of his skin. Dick and his pal actually did it! At this point he realised that aside from the criminals he was the only person in the world who knew who’d done it. What to do? As every con knows, snitches get stiches. But on the other hand, there was a thousand dollar reward for information. Hmmm.



WAITING IMPATIENTLY FOR THE HANGMAN

Truman Capote did more than interview the two killers once they were caught. He visited them dozens of times, spent many hours with them, particularly liked Perry Smith, sent them the maximum allowed letters and gifts of books and candy. The book was finished by 1963 – all except for the last chapter, when the death penalty would be finally applied.

He could not finish his book until he had an ending, but neither could he put it aside and go on with something else. …His frustration was made worse by his knowledge that, lying in front of him, missing only thirty or forty pages, was the best-seller that would alter his life irrevocably, that would make him rich… the success of In Cold Blood was as predictable as the future movements of the planets.

Imagine the bizarre mixture of hopeful anticipation and agonised disappointment as Perry and Hickock went through appeal after appeal, their damned busy lawyers petitioned for a new trial – this nearly gave TC a heart attack – he liked these miserable malformed murderers but why didn’t they just go ahead and hang them so he could get his book done and become rich and famous as was his destiny? Why are they torturing me like this with their endless appeals and delays? I’m only human!

A MASTERPIECE

This is a great but strange book, a non fiction novel, I can see where that odd phrase came from, it veers between reportage and entirely novelistic recreations of some scenes with dialogue and characters and all, in this way it’s the exact literary version of the “re-enactments” they do on some true crime shows – I hate those, but in Truman’s hands it never comes across as tacky.

Not everyone was attentive; one juror, as though poisoned by the numerous spring-fever yawns weighting the air, sat with drugged eyes and jaws so utterly ajar bees could have buzzed in and out.

So good is TC in this book that it becomes a real shame that this book made him and destroyed him at the same time. He spent the next 20 years dithering, writing bits and pieces, but there was never another novel or much of anything after this one. Then he died.



IN COLDER BLOOD

Three movies :

In Cold Blood (1966) – the film of the book, really excellent

Capote (2005)
Infamous (2006)

Both these biopics concentrate on TC’s weird relationship with Perry Smith, both are worth it

And Gerald Clarke’s biography of TC is really excellent.

Within 10 minutes of finishing In Cold Blood you'll be on the internet searching for pictures of the killers and victims of this real world multiple-slaying narrated brilliantly by Truman Capote. The photos are there, and like a voyeur, you'll be drawn, captivated, needing to see the mug shots, the murdered family, the courtroom stills, the crime scene, each room that held a body with a head blown open like a busted melon.

Capote breathes such realism into the characters that all you'll need to make the story complete are those black-and-white photos. With an economy of words and language that is clear and straightforward, Capote successfully makes a difficult story very readable, very believable. The difficult part was taking a true story constructed from witness statements, interrogations, and multiple interviews between killers and author, and then salting in between with a dialogue that is perfectly deduced from a close personal knowledge of the killers--their attributes, their movements, their proclivities.

I felt like I was watching the action unfold, not so much reading it. And yet, Capote was able to do this without the cloyed techniques so prevalent in the mass media paperbacks you find at large grocery store chains. There are no outrageous cliffhangers between chapters, no desperate chases, no irrational climax, no unknown player revealed in chapter finis. In fact, he chose to introduce the murderers up front, then coolly alternates chapters between killers and victims, and then, when victims were eliminated, between killers and prosecutors. I liked this approach. It's uncommon. I liked the way it disarmed me, and made it a story of mechanical transaction rather than an emotional racetrack. For this reason the story, for me, was one of 'why' instead of 'how.'

I also liked that Capote applied psychoanalysis to the crime. Surely there must have been some insanity involved. But no, not really! And that was the real surprise. Apart from a tough childhood and some persistant hard knocks, the killers were probably no more deviant than a majority of cases that fall through the juvenille system, even today. The key ingredient to the crime was the bizarre congruency of their personalities--merely deviant when separated--that when mixed together created a lethal combination. Operating together, the killers must have felt the bewilderment one experiences when finding 2 spalls of broken rock in a large pile and suddenly, absurdly, fitting them exactly together.

New word: sartorial

After I read it, I looked up pictures of the Clutter family, and just stared for about five minutes. They endured what is probably everyone’s worst fear.

Having never heard anything of the Clutter murders prior to reading this book, the experience of reading it was intense, gripping, and suspenseful from beginning to end. Capote, with his impartial writing style, relayed facts and details in such a way as to give a complete character illustration of everyone involved: from each of the Clutters, to the investigators, lawyers, and even the murderers themselves. He did not reveal his personal sentiments or biases, or even presume to know right from wrong. In what he coined a “non-fiction novel,” Capote brilliantly combined the elements of a fictional murder novel with factual journalism and psychological analysis to show the moral dilemmas surrounding the act of murder.

In the section about the Clutter family life during their final days before the murders, Capote’s description of their daily routines and habits made what was to come even more troubling. Nancy and Kenyon were going through the typical hardships of adolescence; Nancy had a boyfriend of whom her father did not approve and was the most popular girl in school, while Kenyon was self-conscious, nerdy, and socially awkward. Herbert and Bonnie’s marriage was a bit shaky; Bonnie had a mysterious and fleeting mental illness, and Herbert was very busy with his farming business and did not have much time to tend to her. However, despite their problems, they maintained a strong family bond, were well-liked by the entire community, and we get a sense that things were looking up for them.

After the murder takes place, as if to intensify the suspense, Capote does not immediately reveal to us exactly how or why Perry and Dick committed the crime, but instead takes us on their journey as they attempt escape through the deep South while the investigators begin to try to solve the crime. We learn much about these two characters through their interactions with each other, letters, diary excerpts, and interviews with family members. We are brought deep into their psyche, learning everything from their personal hygiene habits to their mannerisms and quirks. In an uncomfortable yet brilliant way, Capote allows us to sympathize with the murderers, if only for a moment. What exactly went wrong with them? Did Perry Smith’s childhood of abuse, neglect, and displacement lead him to have moments of extreme callousness and violence? Dick, who had a seemingly normal childhood and a loving family, was in a car accident which left him with a permanent head injury. Was his head injury the cause of his downfall, or was it some other unknown character defect? Even though they were capable of evil and cold-heartedness, they also had goals and insecurities as well as the capacity for creativity, love, and fear. The murders were a tragic “psychological accident” (according to Alvin Dewey), the collision of two personalities gone terribly wrong with an innocent family who was in the wrong situation at the wrong time.

The final section of the book, from their first of many trials to their execution, presents us with the moral dilemmas surrounding the punishment of crime. Capote does not make any definitive conclusions, but poses many questions: Is execution right or wrong? Why the long delay (approx. 6 years) between the guilty verdict and the execution? Was a fair trial possible or necessary, given the horrific nature of the crimes committed? It is impossible to summarize the impact of this book in a few paragraphs, but it will definitely stay with me for years to come.

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.

I almost gave up on this classic. The reason I didn't is that this was the very first book I added to my want-to-read shelf when I signed up for this account in 2014! It'll bring bad juju if you know what I mean.

Reading Road Trip 2020

Current location: Kansas

How can I explain this? It was like I wasn't part of it. More as though I was reading a story. And I had to know what was going to happen. The end.

If you ask a random American to name a book they associate with the state of Kansas, they will most likely answer The Wonderful World of Oz (a story more popularly known by the movie's name, The Wizard of Oz).

If you ask a devoted reader the same question, you will get Oz, for sure, but you'll have a quick second answer: In Cold Blood.

Having already read Frank Baum's underwhelming story about Oz several years ago, I knew this book would be my obvious choice for Kansas.

But I didn't want it to be.

You see. . . although I respect Truman Capote as a writer, I am not the reader for this. I don't read “true crime” novels, and I don't read horror, real or otherwise.

And this is horror. Real life horror. And it is. . . horrific.

I can't think of a better way to express to you what my experience of reading this book looked like this week other than to share this photo of a beloved Seinfeld episode:



As implausible as it seems, both The Wizard of Oz and In Cold Blood do share something in common. . . two really creepy bad guys:



But, even though I'm trying to lighten the mood with a little humor here, it's only an act. I experienced nothing but heaviness this week. This is a heartbreaking true story, and, even though I believe it to be Mr. Capote's magnum opus, I can only express the greatest relief that this particular read is over. (Thus four stars, not five. Five, for me, means I look forward to a reread).

This is a story of broken people who broke people. It was soul crushing for me.

To be murdered. To be murdered. No. No. There's nothing worse. Nothing worse than that. Nothing.

*2.5/5

Try as I might, I could not get invested in this book. I think it was far too overstuffed with information that was irrelevant to the central plot, and it was so dry that every time I tried to read it I would get bored. I have spent half a month trying to push myself through this. Definitely not the story for me, although the mystery itself (when it was actually being told) was fascinating.