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| In Cold Blood : A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequences (Penguin Modern Classics) | 
 enlarge | Author: Truman Capote
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Category: Book
List Price: £8.99
Buy Used: £3.87
You Save: £5.12 (57%)
New (33) from £3.89
Avg. Customer Rating:  34 reviews
Sales Rank: 970
Media: Paperback
Edition: New edition
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5 x 0.9
ISBN: 0141182571
Dewey Decimal Number: 364
EAN: 9780141182575
ASIN: 0141182571
Publication Date: February 3, 2000
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: This book is in very good condition
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| Customer Reviews: Read 29 more reviews...
Four shotgun blasts that changed a town forever! October 5, 2008
Recently re-read this disturbing factional story of unspeakable horror after some thirty odd years, re-visiting the pain of Holcomb, the scene of the tragic, senseless snuffing out of the Clutters. Contoversial on its publication due to its blending of fact and fiction, a hybrid composite that had not been done before, Capote's "In Cold Blood" reconstucts, in all their brutal detail, the 1959 grisly, cold-blooded murder of the Clutter family on their farm in the plains of western
Kansas when four shotgun blasts changed the town of Holcomb forever.
Capote's meticulous reconstruction covers the lead-up to the gruesome murders and the aftermath. In the lead-up, Capote builds suspense and tension by cross-cutting lntermittently between descriptions of the routine domestic life of the Clutters in their small farming community near Holcomb and the unstable lives of drifters Smith and Hickock what's chilling is their humaness in the picture Capote draws - as they drift cross-country to Holcomb. The aftermath comprehensively covers the search for and apprehension of the killers and their subsequent trial and incarceration on death row. WARNING - the amoral Perry Smith may make your blood run cold!
Capote's case-study is concerned not just with the who of the crime but the why, probing into every facet of the lives of the killers, the background influences that shaped them, taking us into their minds to give us the opportunity to get to know them, exploring the psyche of the criminal mind, to discover the psychological motivation that can turn men into monsters. Aforerunner of classic true-crime titles sush as "Fatal Vision" by Joe McGinnis and "Daddy's Girl" by Clifford Irvine, "In Cold Blood" is itself, an American classic.
Masterpiece of crime writing August 25, 2008
I read this book over several weeks yet every time I picked it up I was able to get straight back into the story. I think this is slightly due to the style of writing giving out accurate information in a chronological order similar to a long running news story.
Capote's writing is always brilliant whatever he writes about. There is no word wasted here, no over the top descriptions just a very gripping true story told from every angle. He doesnt judge anyone involved but gives enough detail to make you sympathise 'almost' with the killers.
Before reading this book the only story I knew of Kansas was the Wizard of OZ which also evokes the huge plains where farming is the main source of income, windy and lonesome with god fearing, hard working farming folk making a living. Then one night this terrible crime takes place. Capote relives each and every minute of the crime, the getaway, eventual capture and the court hearing and outcome. A great book in every way.
Crime, punishment, and more July 15, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote was published in 1966, and is based on events that happened almost fifty years ago. The events were real. This is not a work of fiction. The Clutters, an appropriately surnamed Kansas family, have their own complications within their rambling homestead. What family doesn't? Clutter the father is a farmer. Who isn't in these parts? Life is not so productive of late. Whose is? The two younger children, a daughter and a son, still live in. The others have left, happily.
And then, in November 1959, the four Clutters are found gagged, apart from the mother, all with their throats cut and their brains blown out by shotgun fire. The community is in turmoil. No-one can explain why anyone might have wanted to kill a whole family in Holcomb, a small, poor, rural community in the mid-West Bible belt.
Hickock (Hicock) and Smith are two lads on the move. Their families might be dysfunctional. On the other hand they might not. Their socialisation might have been lacking. On the other hand it might not. For whatever reason, individually and collectively they prey on others, prey in a way that renders them culpable, detectable and ultimately punishable. They know thieving is wrong. So, one of them says, we've stolen lives, so it must be serious. It was the two of them that pulled the trigger, that blew brains out, that slit throats, that did not quite commit rape. There are limits. And all for forty dollars and a transistor radio.
I give nothing of this book away when I reveal that the two lads did commit the murders - exactly how no-one ever admitted - and that, after years of litigious wrangling, both were hanged. The strength of In Cold Blood is not what happens, but how it happens.
Truman Capote offers us a vast book in just four sustained chapters, each of which is sub-divided as the narrative shifts between aspects of the different protagonists' lives. Throughout, the style is much more complex than mere journalism, but the clarity with which it communicates is at times breathtaking. We hear from those directly involved, both victims and perpetrators, their families, the police, the judiciary, the neighbours, the lawyers, the passers-by, the acquaintances, the cellmates. The detail is forensic.
It is essential that the reader is constantly reminded that this is not fiction. Truman Capote offers dialogue where a journalist would report, offers interpretation where an historian would defer, offer opinion where an observer might decline. And so In Cold Blood becomes and absorbing, multi-faceted, mid-twentieth century reworking of Crime And Punishment. The crucial difference that the intervening years have generated is that where the latter concentrated on the individual circumstances and motives of the perpetrator, In Cold Blood explores the social and the contextual alongside the psychological.
And this is where the book becomes deeply disturbing, because it seems to suggest that the individuality that contemporary society seems to demand of us might itself promote a degree of self-centredness, of selfishness, perhaps, that might give rise to nothing less than contempt for others. In the forty years since the publication of In Cold Blood, it could be argued that such pressures might have increased. Frightening, indeed.
A Truly Great Book January 7, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is one of the finest books I have ever read. It is gripping and vivid from start to finish and evokes fascination and emotion. It is also cleverly worked in the structural sense in that a picture of the killers, the murdered family, the police and the community is painted through quotations from actual people who were there at the time.
Capote is also a very gifted writer and his penmanship adds great poignancy and heart to the gruesome story.
Terrifyingly Magnificent. September 8, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
'In Cold Blood' is one of the best books of all time. It should be required reading in all beginning college lit courses, if not in high school. I first read 'In Cold Blood' in high school (in the 80s), and I read it in one sitting- straight through the night- just because I couldn't put it down. I have recently purchased this newer edition, because this book is worth reading again.
To begin with, Truman Capote, for all his notoriety, was an incredible writer, and this book is one of his finest. The gritty and depressing existence of Dick and Perry that leads up to one terrifying night in Kansas is so vividly represented, you feel all the more frightened as you are reading it, because it seems you have become witness to the absolute terror and brutality perpetrated on an innocent family by these two men. Truman Capote not only presents in graphic detail the terror of this night, but he also reveals the personalities of Dick and Perry in such a way that, even though they are despicable human beings, you may feel a twinge of sorrow for them. The birth of each man's anger, and the inability of either one of them to integrate into society, was formed in childhoods of abuse. It truly is amazing how Capote got inside the heads of these pathetic men, capturing the pervasive sadness and despair, bizarrely coupled with hope for a "normal" future. The relationship of Dick and Perry is almost a symbiotic one. Separately, they may not have done what they did, but together, they are lethal. The gullibility of a person, who never felt like he belonged, combined with another person who thinks he needs to exact revenge on society- it's a sick combination of pack mentality and ignorance. Eventually, all of this culminates into a night of terror in Kansas wrought by these two men. The portrayal is so graphic in nature; no one could read it without being rendered silently stunned by the terror of it all. The sadness felt for this totally unsuspecting and wholly innocent family is overwhelming. Certainly there have been similar crimes, but the representation of it by Capote, and the intrinsic knowledge of these two men, makes you feel you had a front row view of the whole thing.
`In Cold Blood' is less about the particulars of that awful crime one terrifying night in Kansas; it is more about the insidiousness of what childhood abuse and feeling disenfranchised can do to a person. It would be easy to focus on the terror and sadness of this massacre, but the brilliance of Capote is that the focus is placed on the murderers and trying to engender compassion from the reader for them. With Capote's vision in writing, he almost gets us there. After the capture and imprisonment of these two men, you can physically feel the fear in their hearts for their own condemnation. Perry's fear of execution is especially haunting. This book is a must read for anyone who likes to read and makes no difference that it was written 40 years ago. It transcends all genres, because even though the story is terrifying, the writing is phenomenal, and you will NEVER forget it.
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