IN COLD BLOOD by Truman Capote

IN COLD BLOOD by Truman Capote

No review from me will ever do this book justice. I can't say marvellous, fabulous, fantastic and all those other uplifting and positive words, because the book is about murder most horrible  - in cold blood  no less. But as a quality book, a well written, put together and very memorable book to read, it is, for me, right up there with the best. There are many, many very interesting and insightful and passionate reviews on Goodreads and other places about this book. The most memorable review I read was by a man who grew up in the state of Kansas. It was near the small town of Holcomb in south west Kansas, that one night in November 1959, the Clutter family of four were tied up, tortured then shot in their beds by two petty criminals looking for a safe full of money. The reviewer met a librarian who grew up not far from the Clutter farm, and vividly remembers her father putting locks on all the outside doors of the house after the murders. She sounds scared when she is telling the reviewer this some 55 years later. Truman Capote also conveys very vividly this fear that the local people had about what had happened in their small safe farming community.

The book is subtitled 'A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequences'. It marked Capote's first foray into what we now call the non-fiction novel, a new genre at the time he wrote this book in the 1960s. After the murders occurred Capote and his friend Harper Lee travelled to Kansas and interviewed as many people as they could about the family, the community, the murder and so on. Smith and Hickock, the two killers, were eventually hanged for their crime. But not before Capote also spent time interviewing them. His book also tells their stories and how they came to be killers. Apparently some of the things in the book are not strictly correct, but it does not detract from what is a captivating read, the perfection of his character portrayals, the whole horrifying next door feel about it all. It is a book of horror, chillingly so, made more so by it being written in the neutral tones of reportage.