Some may have thought I chose this book for my Read the Classics yearly challenge. Others might say it is because I am a true crime writer.
Both are wrong. I picked this book because Truman Copote was friends with Harper Lee. She is said to have based the character of Dill on him, and I love To Kill a Mockingbird.
Synopsis
The chilling true crime 'non-fiction novel' that made Truman Capote's name, In Cold Blood, is a seminal work of modern prose, a remarkable synthesis of journalistic skill and powerfully evocative narrative published in Penguin Modern Classics.
Controversial and compelling,
In Cold Blood reconstructs the murder in 1959 of a Kansas farmer, his wife and both their children.
Truman Capote's comprehensive study of the killings and subsequent investigation explores the circumstances surrounding this terrible crime and the effect it had on those involved.
At the centre of his study are the amoral young killers Perry Smith and Dick Hickcock, who, vividly drawn by Capote, are shown to be reprehensible yet entirely and frighteningly human. 'It is the American dream turning into the American nightmare.
By juxtaposing and dovetailing the lives and values of the Clutters and those of the killers, Capote produces a stark image of the deep doubleness of American life ...a remarkable book' Spectator
Impressions
This book is often considered one of the first true crime books. It started the method of using novelistic techniques when talking about crime.
However, this is also one of the biggest criticisms of the book. Did the author fabricate parts of the book to make it a good read?
Capote either has immense attention to detail and must have spent hours researching and interviewing those who knew, or he made some of it up.
Evidence would say that much of what happened to the family that night and their conversations must have been fabricated. Then you ask yourself, what else has been?
Despite this, you can’t get away with the beautiful prose of this book, and the mix of horror and family story makes it an easy read.
I especially liked the way he humanised the detective teams by giving us a look into their family lives. Another amicable quality of the book is the respectful way he navigates the story of the Clutters.
This book didn’t wow, with the hype around it, I was expecting it to. It is an excellent true crime book, but I have read better.
Two-Sentence Summary
It's an excellent actual crime book. But it falls very short of being a classic.
It is easy to ignore the rain if you have a raincoat.