In Cold Blood (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics)

a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences

Hardcover, 352 pages

English language

Published May 10, 1999 by Penguin Books.

ISBN:
978-0-14-018701-4
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4 stars (122 reviews)

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 Clutter family in the small farming community of Holcomb, Kansas. Capote learned of the quadruple murder before the killers were captured, and he traveled to Kansas to write about the crime. He was accompanied by his childhood friend and fellow author Harper Lee, and they interviewed residents and investigators assigned to the case and took thousands of pages of notes. Killers Richard 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. In Cold Blood was an instant success and is the second-best-selling true crime book in history, behind Vincent Bugliosi's Helter Skelter (1974) about the Charles Manson murders. Some critics consider Capote's work the original …

53 editions

Review of 'In Cold Blood' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Listening to this on audiobook is like hearing the First True Crime Podcast. The tension with the slow reveal of what happened, the focus on the criminals as much as the victims or the police tracking down the criminals, the homoerotic undercurrent, it set the standard for much of what was to come.

This book stays with you, it makes a strange case for both the need to keep certain people away from the general public forever but also why capital punishment isn't the answer.

The first time I read this I remember expecting more in terms of motivation and connections between the victims and the criminals and feeling a little let down. This time around I appreciate that it's that very lack of connection that makes the aftermath of the town so fascinating to focus on.

Also it's hilarious how much more interesting a character Perry was out of …

A masterpiece

5 stars

I only rarely pick up true crime books these days because I devoured so many not-so-well-written examples as a teenager that they quite put me off attempting any more. That said, a friend offering to lend me his vintage edition of In Cold Blood together with it being a Classic and of the right era to complete my current Decade Challenge - how could I turn it down?

Capote certainly did his research for In Cold Blood. I wasn't expecting such an incredible depth and breadth of information, and especially not for so many pages of small font (it's an old book) to grip my attention for hours. This is excellent reportage journalism of a kind I feel we rarely encounter any more (although I was strongly reminded of One Of Us: Anders Breivik by Asne Seierstad which I would happily recommend to other fans of In Cold Blood. Truman …

Review of 'In Cold Blood' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

I quite liked the book. It's well written because it lacks voyeurism, provides enough space for the victims and accomplishes to give an understanding why people become murder.
BUT, after finishing I read that witnesses were misquoted by Capote and what is even worse, entire events were made up. So it's fiction and not non-fiction as it claims. Therefore only 2 of 5 from me.

Nevertheless, Capote spent six years of work on this novel, spoke a lot with the murderers and many wittnesses. So I assume many things are accurate and hold the earlier mentioned premise. There were many things I found interesting in the novel. For example it showed that even in the 60s there was some awareness of how early childhood trauma affects the life of people. I honestly did not expect that. Next, the process, if it really happened as it is described in the book, …

Review of 'In Cold Blood' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

There's a reason you've probably heard of this book even if you haven't read it, and the fact that it has, at the time of writing, 580,000 ratings on GoodReads probably underlines it - it's a classic, apparently. But, like a classic car, there are some bits that don't work too well - with some overly florid language, particularly at the beginning of the book, almost signalling that Capote is trying too hard.

Occasionally, you get the feeling that he's being paid by the word. Perhaps he was: long excerpts from letters and documents pop up every so often that do little to aid the story or to develop character.

The pacing of the story is a little odd, too, with some parts whisking by, and other parts dwelled on with glacial slowness. But then, I'm not a literature teacher, and if I were, I'd probably point out why he's …

Good for an unintentional lesson on 'true crime' history.

3 stars

For people who enjoy true crime, this often feels like a must read because of it being so commonplace in popular culture; the crimes are more than a half-century old, they took place in such a sleepy part of the United States, and yet so many people are well-aware of this book and Truman Capote. It's intriguing how important this book was.

But, for today, it has some other interesting aspects. There are so many pieces of it that remind me of arguments taking place in a modern context. Capote probably wasn't aware of what would become interesting 50 or so years later. The descriptions of Dick Hickock by people in the community that he grew up in. His parents describe him as a "good boy," trying to say that it was the fault of a car accident that he became what he was; you see a few mentions of …

Review of 'In Cold Blood' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

As with many seminal works that pioneered a genre, this book is... fine. Capote was one of the first to write a non-fiction novelization of "true crime" events, and the genre is now well-established and unremarkable, but this book was the original "Serial."

Capote extensively interviewed people who knew the family and the murderers, and much of the story does have an unsensational ring of truth. The murderers aren't the classic waxed-mustache villains with a dastardly smile; they're not insane perverts in the modern trope: they're amoral, asocial men of the type which humanity has always had among us, and is labeling now as "incels," who have a palpable feeling of their own superiority and believe society owes them.

One of the most striking parts of this book to me were the statistics on incarceration by race. "The present warden, Sherman H. Crouse, keeps a chart which lists the daily …

Review of 'In Cold Blood' on 'Storygraph'

4 stars

I'm happy I finally read this book. The way Capote uses imagined dialogue and scenes involving the killers made very unsympathetic people/characters somewhat sympathetic. Once I felt that at least one of the men, Perry, was a kind soul who couldn't possibly be the one who pulled the trigger, Capote hit me with what actually took place. The whole murder scenario was a punch to the gut after taking his time building the characters into real human beings, the victims and the murderers.

It's a story that will stick with me for a good long time.

Review of 'In Cold Blood' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

I found this book tedious to read and yet hard to put down. Capote delivers incredible amounts of absolutely worthless information and that makes the book often difficult to read because I just don't care about the history of side characters. But there is still the voyeurism this book plays to and that made me go on, although I started skipping paragraphs later on. At the time this book apparently did something new, but when reading it now it just feels way too long. We usually get the same from a long article these days. In the end I thought it's an OK read.

Review of 'In Cold Blood (Penguin Modern Classics)' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

In 1959 a farmer from Holcomb, Kansas was killed along with his wife and two of his four children by a couple of two-bit thieves. This brutal crime spawned a desperate search for the killers who left bloody footprints at the murder scene. From petty crime to mass murder, In Cold Blood tells the story from murder to the gallows where they were executed by hanging.

In the Truman Capote literary masterpiece, it is easy to consider In Cold Blood a crime novel; it has shades of pulp and southern gothic throughout the book. However this journalistic investigation has often been cited as the first and best example of the non-fiction genre known as true crime. While there have been true crime books before In Cold Blood, this book did redefine the genre. Capote likes to call his book a non-fiction novel which he defined in an interview with The …

Review of 'In Cold Blood' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

More considered reviews of this classic are many, I'm sure, so no point me quickly trying to repeat them here.

The writing style is comparable to the other great novels - fiction or otherwise. The ability of the reader to empathise with each of the characters mentioned is beyond compare with any other book I've read.

My one small quibble is the section describing the psychiatric profile of Smith and Hickock. By including the scientific description of what was already clear from the well written text, in my view Capote pedestrianises that section.

Otherwise perfect, often coming close to making us feel sympathy for the killers, but never crossing that tipping point - the final few paragraphs a magnificent example of that.

Review of 'In Cold Blood' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

This book will always be one of my top 10, it was a turning point in my reading life, I went from reading easy books by Stephen King, Dean Koontz and James Herbert and started exploring the literary world. Because of this book I fell in love with Bukowski's stories.

So much of this it is just a recount of what a few people did in a day before their murder, nothing they do is interesting but it has been written so well you are drawn into their daily lives and every single moment has you on the edge of your seat, probably because you already know how things are going to end, I must have a very morbid interest in things.

Some people might be put off by the subject matter but it is not about the crime itself but about the lead up to the murders and why …

Review of 'In Cold Blood' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

I don't know if this really was the first example of the new journalism, but it has a not quite objective quality that makes for an unusually riveting true crime story. I found the reading experience enhanced by whatever little familiarity I had with the author - mostly from his appearances on Dick Cavett in the 70s. I read the folio society edition.

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  • True crime
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