A seminal work for the nonfiction novel and the true crime genre, Truman Capote's In Cold Blood stands apart from most of its literary descendants. Not only is it compelling and suspenseful even when you know (like many crime dramatizations) what's going to happen, it's also very well-written. In fact, its literary quality gives In Cold Blood a dimension which few other nonfiction novels will match. The evolution of the form, since In Cold Blood, is nothing short of astonishing. It makes you appreciate how different the experience of reading the book is now compared to when the book was published. Yet, it is not a stuffy classic. This work made the world safe for nonfiction! Definitely worth reading!

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote was described by its author as a non-fiction novel.

The novel was first published in 1965 and at the time this style of writing, perhaps even the template for a new genre, was fresh and new and bold. Almost 50 years later and the disturbing images are as fresh, vibrant and malevolent as when the ink was wet.

The style of writing has no doubt inspired generations of writers since, but their imitation has done little to diminish the power of Capote’s work. Whether it was wholly accurate or not is for journalists and scholars to debate, but for the reader, his vision was compelling and his perspective on the crime, and especially as a character study, almost a biography, on the criminals is hypnotic.

Critics may take umbrage with Capote’s sympathetic depiction of the killer’s plight, and perhaps such an argument has great merit, since the murderers showed no mercy to their victims, but Capote’s contribution lies in his objective illumination of all the surrounding facts and details of the crime. The author began with the crime scene outlines of the victims as they were stenciled on the floor of an upper middle class home in western Kansas and rippled outward until his narrative covered the lives, background and family dynamics of the victims, their murderers and the laws and cultures that had produced both.

A staggeringly detailed account of a brutal slaying, Capote has left us with a rich literary gift that should be on a list of books that must be read.

as a massive bookworm and true crime enthusiast, i have no explanation for why its taken me so long to read this. maybe its because i prefer my true crime stories in the form of documentaries and podcasts. regardless, i was super excited to finally pick up the book that is considered the first true crime novel and pioneered the nonfiction subgenre.

what really surprised me about this was how capote didnt just stick to the crime and the trial. the novel-like prose explores the familys life, the community of holcomb, and the psychological complexities of the murderers.

after reading more about the process of capotes research and writing of this crime, it makes sense why he spends so much time talking about the murderers backgrounds, childhoods, relationships, and connections to each other.

for those who are only looking for facts about the crime, i would stick to the wikipedia page. for those who want in-depth character profiles, then this is the book for you.

↠ 3.5 stars

It is clear from reading In Cold Blood that not only is Philip Seymour Hoffman an excellent writer, but he is also an in-depth researcher. Every line in this book is painstakingly detailed and therein, as they say, is the devil. Well, the devil had me hooked from start to finish.

Beginning with a day-in-the-life of the Clutter family shortly before four of its members were slain, Mr. Hoffman presents the real-life tale of the murders (as well as its aftermath) in a somewhat nonlinear fashion, skipping past the killings themselves to account for the daily activities and whereabouts of their perpetrators—Dick Hickock and Perry Smith—until finally revealing, once Hickock and Smith are caught, the goings-on at the Clutter family home on the night of the murders. All of this, I think, adds to the intensity of the storytelling and maintains the suspense necessary to move the narrative along.

n  n
The Clutter family home in Holcomb, KS, site of the November 15, 1959 murders.

Though the writing is technically perfect, and someone (like Trudi) might come onto this review and yell at me for having attributed to it an incorrect number of stars, it is difficult for me to award that fifth star in cases where the book fails to rock my world, emotionally speaking. In other words, a book has to have its way with me—it needs to seduce me and whisper into my ear, and even making breakfast for me in the morning wouldn’t hurt. But these are just explanatory ramblings, and they are mostly unnecessary. Because this really is one helluva book.

In doing some research of my own I have discovered that Mr. Hoffman was not alone in his procurement of the details for this book. His good friend Catherine Keener, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, accompanied him to the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, where the murders took place. He did this, presumably, to maximize the information-garnering potential for his manuscript. But oddly enough, Keener is not credited anywhere in the novel as having made any contribution to it whatsoever.

Come to think of it, though, neither is Philip Seymour Hoffman.

"I thought he was a very nice gentleman. Soft-spoken. I thought so right up to the moment I cut his throat."
- Truman Capote, In Cold Blood



I'm not sure why I waited so long to sit down and read this novel. I've read and enjoyed Other Voices, Other Rooms and Breakfast at Tiffany's. Perhaps, it is just that the novel wasn't very, well, novel. Without having read it I felt I already knew it. I was surrounded by New Nonfiction inspired by Truman Capote's 1966 book (originally published serially in the New Yorker). Everyone now seemed to write long-journalism pieces like Capote. His influence on journalism and especially on New Journalism was huge. But my kids were reading Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird and, perhaps, triggered by some vague, dusty memory that Harper Lee and Truman Capote were cousins and that she helped Capote out with the research and interviews for 'In Cold Blood' I decided it was the right time to read one of my copies (I own a first edition* and a Modern Library copy).

I wasn't born, but apparently when this came out in the New Yorker back in the mid-1960s it was a sensation. I'm trying to think of a series of articles recently that could compare. Probably the closest thing might be the PODCAST "Serial" or the TV show "Making a Murderer", but I still sense that it was bigger. It was one of those works that both made the author and kind of destroyed him too.

Anyway, it was brutal. Brutal because of its very humanity. Dick and Perry aren't painted as horrible (or even scary) killers. Like Arendt, Capote's trick (perhaps not trick) is to show us how banal, how casual evil is. It was like staring wickedness in the face and recognizing just a bit of oneself (but the boring, cereal eating side). It reminded me of a German Shepherd my dad (a veterinarian) rescued once when I was a kid. He was viscous. I spent hours trying to "tame" him. Over months I was able to (I thought) reduce the anger, the fear, the viciousness in this dog. But occasionally I would see it. He (the dog) hated old people. An old man or woman would walk by our fence and "Bozo" would go mad. We finally found an adopted home for him. Months later, we heard he had jumped an 8 foot fence and attacked an old man and had to be put down. I remember thinking how sad it was. I loved that dog, but at the same time, I recognized that there was something IN that dog that was dangerous and would never change. Anyway, that was kind of how I felt reading about Perry. Here is a man who had, at one level, a certain gentle quality, but without regret, without much pushing, could also quickly kill another human being. I think that duality. That humanity touched by that evil is what haunts that book and makes it relevant now and into the future.

* These aren't very rare because the first edition of 'In Cold Blood' was printed like it was the Bible in 1966 because of the interest shown by the original New Yorker articles.

Truman Capote is a masterful storyteller in the book In Cold Blood. It is a true crime story of the brutal murder of four Clutter family members in Holcomb, Kansas. I listened to it on audiobook and Scott Brick is a phenomenal narrator.

The format of the story structure keeps the tension high because it flips back and forth from a timeframe standpoint. This enables the reader to get to know the killers as young children and adolescents.

Highly recommend!

I think this is the third time I've read this true-crime novel: first time was in high school, and the second was after I moved to Kansas City, but both of those times were pre-Goodreads.

This third time happened to be the most enlightening one, as it followed a reading of "Furious Hours" by Casey Cep, which described how critical Harper Lee was to the reporting of Capote's book. This meant I read "In Cold Blood" with a more critical eye, and spent more time questioning Capote's descriptions and motives. I still appreciated the structure and pacing of the book, but I was more troubled by the amount of sympathy shown for the killers.

"In Cold Blood" is still a great true-crime book, but I'm not sure if I'll be picking it up for a fourth time.

In Cold Blood, Truman Capote

This article is about the book by Truman Capote. In Cold Blood is a non-fiction novel by American author Truman Capote, first published in 1966; it details the 1959 murders of four members of the Herbert Clutter family in the small farming community of Holcomb, Kansas.

When Capote learned of the quadruple murder, before the killers were captured, he decided to travel to Kansas and write about the crime.

He was accompanied by his childhood friend and fellow author Harper Lee, and together they interviewed local residents and investigators assigned to the case and took thousands of pages of notes. The killers, Richard "Dick" Hickock and Perry Smith, were arrested six weeks after the murders and later executed by the state of Kansas.

Capote ultimately spent six years working on the book. When finally published, In Cold Blood was an instant success, and today is the second-biggest-selling true crime book in publishing history, behind Vincent Bugliosi's 1974 book Helter Skelter about the Charles Manson murders.

عنوانهای چاپ شده در ایران: «به خونسردی»؛ «به خونسردی - شرح واقعی قتل چهار نفر و پی آمدهای آن»؛ «در کمال خونسردی»؛ نویسنده: ترومن کاپوتی؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز هفدهم ماه سپتامبر سال 1998میلادی

عنوان: به خونسردی؛ نویسنده: ترومن کاپوت؛ مترجم: باهره راسخ؛ تهران، فرانکلین، 1347، در 345ص، موضوع داستانهای نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده 20م

عنوان: به خونسردی - شرح واقعی قتل چهار نفر و پی آمدهای آن؛ نویسنده: ترومن کاپوتی؛ مترجم: پریوش شهامت؛ تهران، نشر پیکان، 1376، در 467ص؛ شابک 9646229123؛

داستان برگرفته از خبری واقعی، از قتل‌عام یک خانواده، در «کانزاس» است، و همین رویداد به نویسنده فرصت می‌دهد، تا نخستین رمان ناداستان خویش را بنویسند؛ نویسنده زمان بسیاری را صرف گفتگو، با «شاهدان»، «دو قاتل»، و «بررسی گزارش پلیس»، می‌کنند؛ کتابشان در سال1965میلادی، با تیراژی میلیونی برایش نامداری، پیروزی و ثروت به همراه می‌آورد؛ با این کتاب به اوج می‌رسند، و نمی‌توانند هرگزی کتاب دیگری در همین اندازه بنویسند؛ زندگینامه نویسش «جرالد کلارک»، علت را زمان طولانی پژوهش، و خستگی ناشی از کار سنگین ایشان می‌داند؛

تاری بهنگام رسانی 27/06/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 22/05/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

This honestly is one of the best books I have ever read and it certainly was the best non-fiction book I have ever read.
I was utterly captivated by it, from start to finish. The way it was written was just so perfect and fitting - incredibly suspenseful and matter of fact, but still with a touch of emotion.
I think the official term for this book is "non-fiction novel" and while I get why it gets this label, I personally wouldn't actually call it that. Sure, it has the quality of a novel and shares some of the characteristics, but there is something else there, something that makes this specific book unique. Even though it's as captivating as a novel, it doesn't exactly read like fiction. I was always painfully aware that this is NOT a made up story, that all of this has, in fact, really happened. The whole thing was told with so much intensity that you just KNOW that all of this HAS to come from real life.
It was extremely easy for me to picture everything in my head, literally everything! There was an entire movie playing in my head while reading and I loved. every. single. second. of it.

Something I also very much appreciated was the fact that Capote didn't insert himself into the story. If you do some googling, you can find out how interesting his research journey was. To give you a short summary: He drove to the area of the crime shortly after it happened, accompanied by his childhood friend Harper Lee (yes, that Harper Lee), they talked to residents and investigators and together they collected over 8.000 (!) notes; later Capote also talked to the perpetrators directly - altogether he worked six years on the book.
I'm sure he would have had lots to tell about this whole journey and I'm sure it would have been interesting as well. HOWEVER, it would have been ill-fitting and inappropriate in a book about such a serious topic. Capote concentrated on what's important - why and how these murders were committed and who the killers and, more importantly, who the victims were. The whole thing just seemed really respectful, everyone got the amount of time and space they deserved.
I make such a big deal out of this because I've seen it happen before, someone writing a non-fiction book and them making a lot of it about themselves and their own life, making the whole thing part-memoir. When I pick up a book about a certain topic I expect to read about this topic and not about the authors life! So yeah, I am very much thankful that Capote focused on the right things here.

All in all, this truly was just a magnificent book. Seriously, I could write down every single positive adjective in the English language and all of them would express what I feel.
I recommend it to everyone, even to the people who aren't particularly interested in true crime, simply so you can experience some wonderful and well thought out writing.

Hell, yeah...!!

Five stars!!

Five million stars!!

All the stars for this daring masterpiece!!

And a place right next to Nabokov’s Lolita on my bookshelf.

Yes, that would make perfect sense, I think. Why? Well, because both authors had some of the biggest balls ever in the literary universe. And if boldness isn’t a big enough reason for you, what about adding some good writing? And I mean really, really good writing? Hum?

Yeah, sounds good, I know...

But let’s leave Lolita to one side for now and focus on this one.

In Cold Blood.
Nice tittle, isn’t it?
I think it’s great: sharp and so appropriate. One needs a lot of it (cold blood) to get through four hundred pages of terror, madness, superstition and the nasty tricks of destiny (or whatever you want to call it).

I’m perfectly aware of how strange it might sound to say that I loved this book but Capote really ticked all my literary boxes: writing, “characterisation”, structure, pace... Everything. Amazing.
And besides I love a good old road trip (Lolita again. Sorry not sorry).

Oh, and the way Capote switched between an omniscient narrator (himself) and first person narrators and different timelines was completely outstanding. Genius.

Not to mention the dedication and love needed to come up with a literary work like this. Ah, if only I could... I would.

It’s been well over twenty years since I first became aware of this book but I can tell you right away that it’s not going to take me that long to read it again.

A masterclass in storytelling.

A classic till the end of times.

The Clutter family consists of parents, a son, and a daughter. They were Methodists. The farm is beautiful and perfectly maintained, and there is no shortage of cultivated land. It is a discreet family but essential in the small community.
On the other hand, we have two young boys, we would rather say "bad boys," who have made their way to this farm, convinced that money is hiding there. Richard Hickock and Perry Edward will savagely kill the whole family and find nothing!
Truman Capote tells us about an actual news item that shook America. Bennett Miller made an excellent film of it in 2005: "Capote."
Hickock and Perry will already be far. But unfortunately, the Kansas police don't have a clue. So the two young people circulate from state to state, sowing a few deaths in their path.
This book is wonderfully well-written and very thoughtful. It is fascinating to read.

“‘This is it, this is it, this has to be it, there’s the school, there’s the garage, now we turn south.’ To Perry [Smith], it seemed as though Dick [Hickock] were mumbling jubilant mumbo-jumbo. They left the highway, sped through a deserted Holcomb, and crossed the Santa Fe tracks. ‘The bank, that must be the bank, now we turn west – see the trees? This is it, this has to be it.’ The headlights disclosed a lane of Chinese elms; bundles of wind-blown thistle scurried across it. Dick doused the headlights, slowed down, and stopped until his eyes were adjusted to the moon-illuminated night. Presently, the car crept forward…”
-tTruman Capote, In Cold Blood

American crime writing stretches all the way back to before the founding of the United States. If you want – I don’t necessarily recommend it – you can read Cotton Mather, and find him recounting the alleged criminal actions committed by his neighbors (some of which involves taking license with farm animals). Since then, there have been countless newspaper articles, magazine stories, and entire books aimed at fulfilling an insatiable appetite for understanding the felonious conduct of others. Despite the overwhelming number of entries in the true crime genre, however, you cannot have a conversation about it without mentioning one notorious book: Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood.

Billed by its creator as a new literary form, the “nonfiction novel,” this product of the New Journalism was not actually a first of its kind. That does not lessen its impact, or its artistry.

In Cold Blood begins on the windswept plains of Kansas, outside the town of Holcomb (“The land is flat, and the views are extensive; horses, herds of cattle, a white cluster of grain elevators rising as gracefully as Greek temples…”), and ends in a cemetery underneath the same big sky (“the graves…lie in a far corner of the cemetery – beyond the trees, out in the sun, almost at the wheat field’s bright edge...”). In terms of structure, pacing, dialogue, reveals, and fully-realized scenes, this reads as good as any fiction, and far better than most.

That’s the problem, though.

A lot of it is fiction.

***

The story behind the making of In Cold Blood, which was the subject of two major motion pictures, at times threatens to subsume the underlying subject matter, like a snake eating its own tail. According to legend, Capote, a famed author and bon vivant, saw a small article in The New York Times about the murder of Herbert, Bonnie, Kenyon, and Nancy Clutter, members of a relatively well-off farming family. With his authorial senses tingling – nothing sells like murder in the heartland – Capote set off for Kansas with his buddy Nell Harper Lee. Once there, this odd couple essentially embedded themselves into the community, pumping them for information until the well ran dry. Later, once two suspects – Perry Smith and Richard Hickock – were in custody, Capote insinuated himself into their lives as well.

When all was said and done, it became hard to know whether Capote was simply a fact finder, or an active participant, one whose unseen hand actually shaped the outcome of the case.

***

Even with all its baggage, it is startling how much talent is on display here. This is a book that grips you, and insists that you keep reading. The prose is luminous, the characterizations acute, and the setting marvelously realized. Capote finds his arc, and he builds carefully around that, modulating the tension until his big payoff, before settling on as graceful an ending as you can imagine. There are moments of subdued ghastliness, such as Perry Smith’s confession:

[Alvin] Dewey’s ears ring with it – a ringing that almost deafens him to the whispery rush of Smith’s soft voice. But the voice plunges on, ejecting a fusillade of sounds and images: Hickock hunting the discharged shell; hurrying, hurrying, and Kenyon’s head in a circle of light, the murmur of muffled pleadings, then Hickock again scrambling after a used cartridge; Nancy’s room, Nancy listening to boots on hardwood stairs, the creak of the steps as they climb toward her, Nancy’s eyes, Nancy watching the flashlight’s shine seek the target (“She said, ‘Oh, no! Oh, please. No! No! No! No! Don’t! Oh, please don’t! Please!’ I gave the gun to Dick. I told him I’d done all I could do. He took aim, and she turned her face to the wall”); the dark hall, the assassins hastening toward the final door. Perhaps, having heard all she had, Bonnie welcomed their swift approach.

There are also moments when Capote describes a place – a cheap hotel room in Mexico, or the gallows in Kansas – with such tactility that you can almost reach out and touch it. In Cold Blood lives so strongly in the memory because it indelibly implants these images into your head, as well as any movie.

Towering over everything is Capote’s portrait of Perry Smith. In Cold Blood is not a whodunit. Rather, in large part, it is the character study of a killer. A cripple suffering from chronic pain in both legs – which had been crushed in a motorcycle accident – Smith grew up with an alcoholic mother who died when he was very young. He spent time in several orphanages, where he claimed to have been abused. In Capote’s compassionate hands, this victim-turned-victimizer becomes a tragically tortured figure, one so skillfully etched that his ultimately homicidal acts feel like an inevitability.

Of course, part of the problem with In Cold Blood is this very thing. By lifting up Perry Smith, Capote casts a shadow over everyone else: his partner in crime, Hickock; the law enforcement agents who caught him; and most of all, the victims themselves.

Still, if overemphasizing the killer was In Cold Blood’s only problem, it could be dismissed as a common failing of the true crime genre. After all, many (if not most) of these types of stories focus more on the criminal than the victim. Unfortunately, this is a dramatic imperative, since the criminal is the agent of action, while the victim is the passive recipient.

As noted above, however, this is not the only issue with In Cold Blood.

***


From the moment of its publication, In Cold Blood was trailed by accusations: Capote made up dialogue; Capote invented things; Capote was wrong with his interpretations.

Some of these criticisms are off base, as they involve judgment calls or sour grapes. Obviously, people who came off looking bad cried foul, but that doesn’t mean that Capote was wrong. Other criticisms, though, are right on point. The creation of scenes whole cloth, for instance, particularly rankles. For example, the book’s ending – providing a beautiful counterpoint to the opening – is so perfect that it feels fortuitous. According to one of the men involved, it was too perfect, because it never happened.

Perhaps more troubling is Capote’s absence in this story. Told objectively in the third-person – except for long portions of purportedly verbatim recollections from various participants – Capote does not place himself into events.

On the one hand, this was nice. There is a trend in modern true crime for an author to insert him or herself into the chronicle, making their personal story equal to that being presented. This can work, if done right, such as in Michelle McNamara’s posthumously released I’ll Be Gone in the Dark. But it’s hard to do right. In my opinion, many efforts suffer from this intrusion, which can be annoyingly distracting, or used as filler to supplement otherwise meager facts. In Cold Blood is blessedly free of self-conscious handwringing about the ethics of crime-writing. There are no digressions into areas about which a reader could not care less. For all of Capote's legendary ego, there is no reflective navel-gazing. Above all else, there is the thrilling sense of watching things unfold as a witness.

Yet Capote’s absence can be seen as an act of mendacity. According to some sources, he was pulling strings and moving pieces in order to shape the outcome. The extent of this can be debated. Nevertheless, I think it’s fair to say that In Cold Blood without Capote as a character cannot – for this reason alone – be considered the full story.

In the end, the controversy cannot do much to knock In Cold Blood off its pedestal. While it may not be a great work of investigative journalism, it is undoubtedly a powerful piece of art.