The Clutter family is murdered in 1959, an act incomprehensible to the citizens of Holcomb, Kansas. Truman Capote's chilling true crime novel, In Cold Blood, explores motive and aftermath, the personal and the social, past, present and future of the crime.
I read Breakfast at Tiffany's last year and didn't love it, so my expectations were pretty low coming into this one. I had seen Capote a few months before which had really sparked my interest for the story and framed it pretty well for me, but the book was a bit of a slow start regardless. The beginning seems too poetic, particularly for non-fiction, but it quickly finds its speed.
The result is a moving and intimate piece of journalism, a revealing and compelling character study and a pretty damn amazing narrative. Capote doesn't just tell this story, he explores all facets of it, from friends to family, to the people involved to distant, third party people. It presents such a rounded view, both of the intricacies of the case and the effects, its hard not to fall in both horror and love.
5 out of 5.
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