In Cold Blood

I have meant to read this book for some time. I'm a little embarrassed to admit that seeing the Capote film is what finally induced me to read it, but I suppose that must be true. I had seen the film the previous weekend, bought this book during the following week, and just this past weekend, devoured it in all of two days. Capote's masterpiece tells the story of the senseless, brutal killing of a rural Kansas family in 1959. It is beautifully written from start to finish -- in an understated way. If you come into this experience, as I did, conscious of the narcissism of the author, you might be surprised at the writing style. It is very humble, no Joycean or Nabokovian literary showing off. The story is paramount; the author does an amazing job of staying invisible, and respecting that story. Respect is the feeling that is conveyed throughout the book. The telling is very respectful of the Clutter family; you learn of what remarkable people they were, even as they met their ends. The author is also fundamentally respectful of the people of the town, and of the local law enforcement. The book is not without its implied questioning of the judicial process, but again, I greatly appreciated the empathy and respect that pervaded the book. This fundamental respect for human dignity even, in a more disturbing way, pervades even the discussion of the lives of the killers. The author candidly relates the biographies of these two men. On one level, this conveys an understanding of how they came to be what they were, but on a deeper level, it's all still a mystery. Left unanswered, still, is what really causes a man to be a killer. There is a great sense of tragedy throughout the relating of their formative lives -- perhaps not a respect for who they eventually were, but a respect for who they *could* have been. Extremely unsettling is the sheer randomness of it all. The chain of events that causes the Clutter family to be killed is so random, so out-of-the-blue. Capote conveys how thin is the line between everything all seeming well and orderly in the world, and disaster striking out of nowhere. Also coming through very clearly in this book is a cultural moment in time. You read it, feeling that this rural Kansas society is a vanished world. It's a stoic, God-fearing community, but the urban Capote betrays little condescension toward it. Quite the opposite; he seems duly impressed that the only reaction from the crowd to the killers' transference back to the town is one of silence -- no attempted violence, no shouted insults. The restraint and dignity of the townspeople amid this tragedy seems foreign to modern eyes. I found myself liking these people very much, despite my own preference for urban living. But nothing undoes the basic feeling of tragedy that pervades the book. The author sifts through an incredible amount of detail about the crime; information that could only have been gleaned with a tremendous amount of cooperation from the killers themselves. There are details here that we could never have known about unless both killers had related them in their own separate interviews: details both of the crime itself, and of their activities, and further crimes and near-crimes, when on the lam. The final portrait is of two worlds colliding -- a dysfunctional, violent world amid the undercurrents of society, rising up to strike the normal, orderly world of the Clutter family. It leaves the reader feeling as though nothing can be truly safe in our world, as long as the mysteries behind this story remain unresolved.

I read In Cold Blood after watching the movie Capote. I was very aware of the book for years but for some reason never quite got around to it. I'm glad I finally broke down and read it. I was not surprised to find that Capote had no role in the book, even as an unnamed shadow. The movie led me to believe Capote was a player in Perry Smith's life after he was captured. Nevertheless, the book was very well done. As mentioned in the movie, Capote has created a new writing style here. Previously, these subjects were covered much as extended reporting from journalists. However, this reads like a novel...a very well developed and plotted novel. The only thing that prevents me from giving this 5-stars is the fact that at times Capote tediously develops some side story that adds very little to the story, other than pages. But, mostly, the material moves well. To say the story is chilling is an understatement. It in fact is quite disturbing. The fact that our world is shared with people with the capacity to do what was done to the Clutter family is foundational to why this book disturbs me. And although, I fully understand the argument to abolish the death penalty, I somehow stand convinced that it must exist, if only to place the appropriate weight to the scale of justice. Sometimes you must do what needs to be done simply because it is the right thing to do. These men deserved to be hanged. Their death does nothing to bring back the beautiful lives of their victims, however, they deserved what the got.

When a book like IN COLD BLOOD reaches the level of being a classic, there has to be a reason. Consider the following two excerpts: "The land is flat, and the views are awesomely extensive; horses, herds of cattle, a white cluster of grain elevators rising as gracefully as Greek temples are visible long before a traveler reaches them." "Then, starting home, he walked toward the trees, and under them, leaving behind him the big sky, the whisper of wind voices in the wind-bent wheat." The former excerpt is from Capote's opening paragraph; the latter cointains his closing sentence. Both are extraordinary, especially for their time, in capturing the mood and poetry of a place in the middle of a true-life story of a horrific mass murder. As is certainly well known, IN COLD BLOOD is Truman Capote's magazine-article-turned full-length-docu-novel about the murders of four members of the Clutter family in their Holcomb, Kansas, farmhouse in November 1959. The two killers, Dick Hickock and Perry Smith, were ultimately caught, tried, sentenced, and executed, factual matters that are still commonly known today thanks to two recent movies about Capote's life and his efforts to write the book. Even at its publication, IN COLD BLOOD was not a detective story in the traditional sense, since everyone already knew the perpetrators and the case's eventual disposition. In an era when such incidents were reported either factually (newspaper style) or sensationally (crime magazine style), Truman Capote effectively created an entire new genre: journalism as art form. Writing with a level of descriptive detail about places and events that create a strong sense of immediacy in the reader's mind, he begins his story with a re-creation of the Clutter family's last day of life. The effect is profound and eerie, since these pages are read with a foreknowledge of death not shared by the real-life characters on the page. Capote builds his suspense masterfully, alternating between the movements of Hickock and Smith and those of the Clutters (husband and father Herbert, perennially sick wife and mother Bonnie, intelligent, tinkering son Kenyon, and All-American sweetheart daughter and town darling Nancy. As he brings the two parties closer and closer together, Capote continues to fill in background on their respective lives. By the time his orchestrated characters have reached their mutual, bloody crescendo, the reader is intimately acquainted with them as individuals and their respective life stories. Thus, the author gives us individuals with whom we are intimate as characters in a novel, yet they are real people about whom he is reporting in a senseless, horrifying mass murder story. This is Capote's genius and the source of his book's classic status - factual reporting that reads like a novel, displaying the intimacy with its characters that is normally reserved for the so-called "omniscient author," the one who can hear, share, and express his or her characters' most private thoughts and motivations. Capote's pacing and remarkable eye for detail never relent as the story moves from crime to investigation, arrest, and trial by jury. He maneuvered himself into a situation where he was privy to every detail of the police investigation; it is equally clear he had extended access to Hickock and Smith throughout their ordeal, up to and including their ultimate disposition. While it was doubtless a level of access no longer available to reporters or writers, Capote took maximum advantage of it in crafting his story. What comes out of it, surprisingly, is a tale of two socially maladjusted young men of above-average intelligence whose trial was of questionable fairness, particularly as regards the mental health of one of them (who was probably more criminally insane than scheming murderer). In one of the book's most telling moments, Capote recounts the reports that the court-appointed psychiatrist would have rendered had the judge (and Kansas state law at the time) allowed them to do so. IN COLD BLOOD is truly a master work by an effete, East Coast reporter who beat the odds (and prejudices, no doubt) and entwined himself in his story and the lives of its actors to an unheard-of degree. The result was, and is, more than just a gripping account of a horrendous crime. It is a study in criminality: its victims, its effect on their families and community, its perpetrators and their families, even on the law enforcement personnel involved in the investigation. One can hardly imagine a more finely drawn study of a single crime and its all-too-human impact, presented in a form that remains to this day a page-turner in the very best sense of that phrase.

This book is as great as you would expect! I enjoyed the writing and the in depth conversations. Such a page turner

My Review and Thoughts: A masterpiece of criminal history. A masterpiece of literature. This is my second time reading. I read this 20 years ago and it has always stuck with me. I think no matter how many times one reads this you go away with how much of an amazing storyteller that Truman Capote was. He brought to life on these pages living breathing real life characters. He took you you on a darkened journey mixed with all the passions and emotional makeup of life. In Cold Blood is a book that begs to be read. It's a book that captures great detail, a landscape and structure of everything that happened. He brought the people and the town and most of the murders and the aftermath into a crystal clarity of writing perfection. His mastery not only built the victims but also the killers. He gave you the townsfolk. He gave you the daily reality of a small town being rocked by an unbelievable and horrendous ordeal. His prose to unfold history and life is what made Capote a master storyteller. In Cold Blood, the story behind the mass murder of a family is a story that should never be forgotten. As long as this book remains the victims will have a voice. Capote not only gave a voice to the dead, but in a horrifying truth, he gave the killers humanity even though of there inhumanity. There is a blunt nature to describing the crimes and yet also an honest, emotional, respect for the victims. Capote gave you a very sense of Life. His ability to express, pain, horror, discomfort during a time period where crimes like this didn't happen on a regular basis. Now days crimes like this are always in the news, families killed or kids killing there families. But you the reader have to place yourself during the time period. This was a true shock to life, a true horror to the small town reality. This was murders of an unfathomable nature to the conscience of the mind. Would I Recommend: With out a doubt. This should be required reading. It's a book that stands the test of time and is is a important today as it is when it came out. It's a masterpiece of storytelling of the Non-fiction reality. Would I Return to: Already have this is my 2nd time reading it. I read it about 20 years ago and now adventured into it again. It was just as fantastic as it was when it was first read by me. Four Final Words: Masterpiece. Superb. Thoughtful Perfection. My Rating: 5 out of 5

The production is excellent and the narration, too. As for the book, it comes across as an amazingly self-serving piece most likely full of confabulated elaborate and elongated statements that interviewees probably did not give. As a novel, fine, but it's supposed to be factual, I believe.

I became interested in reading In Cold Blood after watching the film Capote (which was excellent), and subsequently ordered a copy of the novel. In Cold Blood was my first Truman Capote novel, and I'd recommend it as a good starting point to Capote's writings (if I can even say that without having read any of his other work). It's a very good story, and it's well written. Capote definately succeeds in bringing the reader inside the "mind of the killer," as cliche as that sounds. It is a little slow at times (I wouldn't call it a 'page turner') - but that's not a complaint, as it was necessary (and also interesting) to explore the background of both the victims and the killers. I'm not entirely sure I'd consider it the masterpiece that the film (as well as other Amazon reviews) built it up to be. That said, however, I'm sitting here having just finished reading it in 2007 - taking into account when it was written and the impact it had on the genre, it certainly is an impressive landmark work. But I just don't think it has the impact on a reader today it would have had on a reader in the 1960s. In short - it was excellent, it was definately worth the read, although I didn't come away thinking it was the mind blowing work it was built up to be. But I would definately recommend it to anyone remotely interested in the crime (and particularly in the true crime) genre.

Such an important read. The writing style was up close and personal, raw, and vivid- which is so important in stories of cases like this one.

Yes it's a bit long winded But the story and the people are so compelling

In Cold Blood is a fictionalization of a true crime drama that details accurately (although there has been some controversy about that) the events leading up to the cold-blooded murder of the Clutter family, father, mother, 17-year-old Nancy, and 16-year-old Kenyon in their farmhouse on the outskirts of Holcomb, Kansas, Nov. 15th, 1959. Truman Capote takes us into the minds of the killers, Perry Smith and Richard Hickock, how they met, planned, and executed what was intended to be a robbery without witnesses, how it all went awry, and what they did after the event. Hickock dropped Smith off at his hotel, then went home to his parents farmhouse, ate dinner, and slept the rest of the afternoon while his father and brother watched a ballgame on TV. His father said at the time, it was unusual for Dick to miss a game on the TV. Capote gets into the minds of members of the tight-knit community of Holcomb, and friends of the Clutters in nearby Garden City, where the family attended the Methodist church. He takes us behind the work of the detectives trying to solve these murders into their family lives, and their painstaking determination to solve a murder scene that revealed almost no clues. Despite the horror of the senseless, brutal murders of a family full of protestant work ethic and innocence of the criminal element of society, Capote's telling masterfully conveys the tragedy without ramming the sickening details down our throats. It is a calm retelling, well-organized in a manner that fills the reader with empathy and pathos for the community, admiration for the way the pieces of the case against Perry and Dick come together, and the feeling that justice was served. There is even a modicum of sadness for the murderers, and some understanding of the twisted way in which their lives evolved to be such a waste. But the sense of loss is reserved in its entirety for the Clutter family, the remaining two older sisters, one married, the other at university, and the grieving town. Even coming to this novelization in command of the facts of the story, one cannot help being drawn into the compelling prose and the attempt to convey the complex workings of the callous regard for life held by these criminals, and others with whom they shared the 2nd floor of the Segregation and Isolation Building of the Kansas State Penitentiary for Men. "In a south section of the prison compound there stands a curious little building: a dark two-storied building shaped like a coffin. . . Among the inmates, the lower floor is known as The Hole — the place to which difficult prisoners, the "hardrock" troublemakers, are now and then banished. The upper story is reached by climbing a circular iron staircase; at the top is Death Row." The early part of the novel alternates the stories of the four members of the family against the stories of Smith and Hickock; afterwards, it juxtaposes the efforts of friends to cope, killers to evade, and detectives to track. It is a seemingly long process. Capote spent countless hours over many years conducting interview. First, the friends of each of the victims, then, the criminals as they awaited trial, followed by several years of appeals, right up to their executions. There are, mercifully, no pictures in the book, benign or otherwise. Capote's prose is clear and precise enough to convey the tranquility of the Clutters' River Valley Farm; it is deft enough to put the more tragic images into our minds without the horrific reality of photos. There is speculation that the ending, where detective Dewey meets Susan Kidwell, a friend Nancy Clutter had planned to attend the University of Kansas with, at the gravesite of the Clutters: four graves gathered under a single gray stone, and quietly discusses how life has moved on, is pure fiction. We can only guess. But it is a nice way to close the book: Sue is at K.U., Bobby Rupp has married, the killers have been executed, and the Clutter graves are left "[under] the big sky, the whisper of wind voices in the wind-bent wheat".

Was mich an dem schon altbekannten Buch interessierte, war die Frage, wie die beiden Täter soweit kamen - tödlich für ihre zufälligen Opfer und sich selbst zu werden. Und natürlich war ich auch neugierig, was am Ruhm des Capote und seines (fast) einzigen Werkes dran ist. Bekannt war mir die Story schon, mein Interesse wurde allerdings neu geweckt als ich "To kill a mockingbird" las (Wer die Nachtigall stört). Eine beeindruckende und vielleicht sogar zeitlos gültige Geschichte über unsere mörderischen Vorurteile. In der Geschichte kommt Truman Capote als Nachbarskind vor, und die Autorin Harper Lee hat ja dann auch Capote bei seinem Werk assistiert. Das Buch jedenfalls ist absolut lesenswert - wenn man die Nerven dafür aufbringt. Die Morde sind nur als kleine Episode sehr dezent geschildert (ohne den bluttriefenden angebl. 'Realismus' wie heute üblich). Trotzdem schwer zu ertragen, wenn man sich nur halbwegs vergegenwärtigt, was das alles für die Beteiligten (inklusive Täter) bedeutet haben muss. Mehr als halbwegs geht ohnehin nicht ... Ich find das Buch sehr empfehlenswert (auch englisch nicht zu schwer zu lesen für mässig sprachgebildete).

excelente!

An outstanding and powerful work of literature, even more impressive because it conveyed true crimes, a profound investigative insight, the vivid sense of time and place, and the atmosphere that cloaked the evil events carried out on November 15 in 1959, in Holcomb, Kansas. Truman Capote is an artist that painted every detail of the story with such a detailed flow that causes us to stop and appreciate the surroundings rather than wishing the story was being pushed at a faster pace. Looking at America in the 50s from the perspective of a foreigner we often think more of a Holywood version of an innocent age, affluent, white picket fences, apple pie, and rock and roll pervading the airwaves. If anyone asked me when and where I'd liked to have lived it would have been the US in the 1950s. In Cold Blood smashes that image with the reality that cruelty can take away life, a community’s character and the idyllic vision I'd imagined above. The murders of four of the Clutter family by Dick Hickock and Perry Smith for $40, stunned not only the population of Holcomb but ultimately a world-wide audience. My vision, I so wanted to believe of the US, couldn't have been better envisioned than by Holcomb in the 1950s, where families rarely locked their doors and the safety of the neighbourhood was never doubted. Hickock and Smith not only brutally destroyed the lives of four innocent people but destroyed the fundamental promise of safety in our own homes. The story explores the background of the murderers, what drove them, how they considered what they had done, the investigation into the crimes, and the community that became fearful and suspicious that for a long time they did not know who was responsible. To achieve this nonfiction novel with such beautiful prose is a seminal point in literature where it is arguable that Capote created a new genre. I have for a long time been fascinated by the relationship between Truman Capote and Harper Lee and how they helped each other research and draft their renowned classics. It is interesting that Harper Lee had been inspired during the ‘In Cold Blood’ collaboration with Capote to research and use the case of Robert Burns who shot dead the serial killer, Reverend Willie Maxwell, to write her own true-crime novel - which never materialised. Another relationship Capote shattered during his years of self-destruction. I do believe this is a must-read novel and is surely a classic and a powerful combination of true-crime with such beautiful writing talent.