Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood": A Chilling True Crime Story

Erik Auzins: Capote at his best good starter for anyone who wants to read Capote

United States on Oct 12, 2023

mc: Book is used. Description of condition was accurate and price was fair. Delivery time as promised.

United States on Oct 07, 2023

Courtney: The quality of the book is great, it was delivered with no damage and printed well. The story itself is definitely worth ready, especially if your a fan of true crime, would recommend

United Kingdom on Oct 01, 2023

Somac: The book is terribly sad because it’s the story of a true event. The victims all seem so honest and sweet; normal people leading happy lives and they did not deserve to die in such a horrible way for what turned out to be completely unnecessary reasons. It haunts you how someone can treat another’s life with such disdain. Truman Capote invented the true crime narrative with this book and his style is interesting and compelling. At no time do you really ever feel sorry for the perpetrators which is good because they were completely contemptible. A truly ground breaking book that stays with you for a long time after you’ve finished it.

United Kingdom on Jul 30, 2023

Jason West: Throughout this novel, it discusses the death penalty and the judicial system’s role in deciding the outcome of the trial. In Cold Blood, written by Truman Capote, illustrates how quickly a small town turned on each other in the mists of tragedy when they believed the murderer to be one of their own. The book follows the life and death of the Clutter family and the lifespan of Perry and Dick. Perry and Dick are both convicted felons, Capote illustrates their lives together after they were released from jail as well as flashbacks from times in their life before jail. Perry Smith and Dick Hickok were partners after jail despite the dramatic contrasts in their childhoods. Perry had a traumatic childhood, with 2 of his siblings dead before the time he turned 30. He also suffered from a motorcycle accident which disfigured the lower half of his body and caused him to become addicted to painkillers. Dick lived a somewhat normal childhood with 2 loving parents. The Clutter’s were a well-respected wealthy family in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas. On November 15, 1959, the Clutter family was killed with a shotgun held a few inches away from their face. Alvin Dewey, the lead...

United States on Nov 30, 2022

FictionFan: In November 1959, two men drove into the small Kansas farming community of Holcomb, broke into the Clutter family’s home and brutally murdered the four occupants, Herb and Bonnie Clutter and their two teenage children, Nancy and Kenyon. Before the murderers were caught, Truman Capote decided to write about the crime, so went to Holcomb to interview friends and neighbours of the victims, residents of the town, and the men investigating the case. It wasn’t long before the perpetrators were identified and captured, so Capote continued his project by writing about the trial and its aftermath – the imprisonment and execution of the murderers, Perry Smith and Richard “Dick” Hickock. This book, first published in 1966, is the result.

Capote approaches the subject from three angles, the victims, the townspeople and the murderers, with the narrative rotating among them. The Clutters, as portrayed here, were fine people, upstanding members of their community and their church, good neighbours and well respected. The children, especially Nancy, seem almost too good to be true, and I couldn’t help but wonder how much the old adage of never speaking ill of the dead had...

United Kingdom on Jan 07, 2019

Lady Fancifull: Truman Capote’s 1966 account of a notorious, barely motive-driven rural multiple murder which took place in Kansas in 1959 catapulted him into the best seller lists and celebrity status.

An upstanding, hard-working family from Holcomb, a small community in the wheat-plains of western Kansas, were brutally murdered by person or persons unknown, in November 1959. The Clutter family, Herb, church-going, teetotal dairy cattle-farmer, his rather delicate but equally upstanding wife Bonnie, and his two children, 16 year old Nancy, vivacious, popular, responsible, admired, and her bookish 15 year old brother Kenton were all shot at point-blank range, having previously been tied up. Herb Clutter also had his throat cut before being shot.

Inevitably, investigation first turned to possible personal and local motive, but there was no evidence at all to suggest this. The community was a tight-knit, respectable, co-operative one, and all the Clutters were warmly regarded by their colleagues, peers, friends, family and neighbours

“The hitherto peaceful congregation of neighbours and old friends had suddenly to endure the unique experience of distrusting each other;...

United Kingdom on Jul 01, 2017

R. J. Ellory: In mid-November, 1959, Truman Capote, renowned author of `Other Voices, Other Rooms' and `Breakfast at Tiffany's' was struck by a newspaper article that appeared in the New York Times. Little more than a brief squib, it outlined the brutal shotgun-slaying of a farmer, his wife, and their two children. It reported that in the small village of Holcomb, Kansas, Herb Clutter, his wife Bonnie, and their two teenage children, Nancy and Kenyon, had been found bound and murdered, the mother and daughter in their beds, the father and the son in the basement of the home.

Capote, at the time a staff writer for the New Yorker magazine, decided that this was the story he next wanted to write about. He left for Kansas almost immediately, taking with him as his `researcher and bodyguard' Nelle Harper Lee, author of `To Kill A Mockingbird' and lifelong friend of Capote's. As children they had grown up beside one another, and even in Mockingbird, the characters of Dill was supposed to have been based on Capote.

So began one of the most famous and fascinating trips in literary history - the diminutive, effete, homosexual Capote, the methodical and pragmatic Lee.

But the story...

United Kingdom on Oct 10, 2012

Steve Koss: 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...

United States on Sep 27, 2009