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Read reviews that mention

truman capote true crime clutter family perry smith well written small town holcomb kansas years ago death penalty true story dick hickock highly recommend even though town of holcomb capital punishment dick and perry high school must read ever read death row
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Robert B. Campbell
5.0 out of 5 stars Terrible crime. Amazing book.
Reviewed in the United States on August 5, 2023
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I finally got around to reading this well-reviewed book, partly delayed because the title put me off — I assumed it would be hard to read due to the horror of the crime and its gory description. Thankfully, I was wrong. Capote provides a fine psychosocial look at senseless murder and its impact on the communities involved. The book raises some questions that we have still not come to terms with as a society. The writing is top-notch. Highly recommended.
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Jason West
4.0 out of 5 stars In Cold Blood is a well written book
Reviewed in the United States on November 30, 2022
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Throughout this novel, it discusses the death penalty and the judicial system’s role in deciding the outcome of the trial. In Cold Blood, written by Truman Capote, illustrates how quickly a small town turned on each other in the mists of tragedy when they believed the murderer to be one of their own. The book follows the life and death of the Clutter family and the lifespan of Perry and Dick. Perry and Dick are both convicted felons, Capote illustrates their lives together after they were released from jail as well as flashbacks from times in their life before jail. Perry Smith and Dick Hickok were partners after jail despite the dramatic contrasts in their childhoods. Perry had a traumatic childhood, with 2 of his siblings dead before the time he turned 30. He also suffered from a motorcycle accident which disfigured the lower half of his body and caused him to become addicted to painkillers. Dick lived a somewhat normal childhood with 2 loving parents. The Clutter’s were a well-respected wealthy family in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas. On November 15, 1959, the Clutter family was killed with a shotgun held a few inches away from their face. Alvin Dewey, the lead detective on the case, struggled with finding a motive for their murders as there were almost no clues. This novel follows the Clutter family case with new clues and a possible motive coming to light. The title In Cold Blood tells the reader that the novel is going to be about a merciless killing that we later find out was driven by greed. Truman Capote won the O. Henry Memorial Short Story Prize twice for his short stories such as A Tree of Night and was a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. In Cold Blood was Truman Capote’s only true crime novel, however, he wrote many other novels such as Other Voices, and Other Rooms. In Cold Blood was published in 1965. Truman Capote well illustrates how easy it is for people to become mistrusting and turn on each other. By the end of the novel the citizens of Holcomb as well as the individuals involved in the trial are on edge and are beginning not to trust each other. Capote creates a good hook and intrigues the reader by telling the reader from the start that the Clutter family is going to be killed. The reader will learn throughout the novel that people change and not everyone can be trusted no matter what you have gone through with that person. In Cold Blood is mainly for people ages 16+ because the details of the murder are not appropriate for children under that age. In Cold Blood is intriguing and unlike most true crime books that I have read, because of the immense detail Truman Capote puts into the backstories of all the characters including the other convicts and individuals Perry and Dick encounter in their travels. In Cold Blood is available on Amazon and at Barnes and Noble for prices ranging from $10.29-$16.95 depending on where the book is purchased.
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Imelda Tellez
4.0 out of 5 stars Good book
Reviewed in the United States on July 24, 2023
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This book was very good, if you're into books and reading this is the one.
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Frank Donnelly
VINE VOICE
5.0 out of 5 stars The Best Non Fiction Violent Crime Work That I Have Read, Although At Times Painful...
Reviewed in the United States on October 14, 2020
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"In Cold Blood" is an iconic non fiction book that is authored by an iconic fiction writer, Truman Capote. The story is about a real life, hideous violent crime that occurred in the State of Kansas in 1959. Although non fiction, the book has the style of fiction and reads as a hard crime thriller, "page turner". In a case such as this, I don't wish to say that I "enjoyed" this book. The crime is disgusting. However the writing is excellent. As a retired police investigator of violent felonies, the entire work had the ring of truth and reality for me.

I had put off reading this book up until now for numerous reasons. As a student of literature and authors, I prefer to read books by authors in order of publication so that I can study the evolution, if any, of the author. Also, in this case, I am a retired police,officer suffering from PTSD. Therefore it was with a good deal of hesitation that I decided to finally read this work. I do need to report to you that I did indeed find it personally very painful. I have worked cases like this and they have stayed with me. In some ways, the old scars were opened To some extent. It was not as bad as I was afraid it would be. (I had asked others about this prior to reading the book.)

Obviously all I know about this case is what I have read. Presuming the work is accurate, I can tell you this is what is like to arrive at the scene of a hideous violent felony in which there are no witnesses and no obvious leads, To a conscientious lead investigator, it is almost impossible to convey the feeling of near hopeless, forlorn, desolation that may descend upon "The Lead" in a case such as this. Truman Capote does a really good job in describing all of this. It proved extremely realistic to me.

Of all the books that I have ever read, if I was instructing a course on homicide investigations, I am positive I could use this book as a core text. I know exactly how I would have worked this "job" after all of the primary work and leads had been run down. Often I was assigned cases such as this after the primary work was done, and the investigation had stalled. The police "caught a break" in this case. However the break came from exactly the type of source that I would have pursued. Believe me it is a complete pain to work a case this way, but it can be done proactively rather than waiting for a break. This is not "normal aberrant" behavior. This is a subset of aberrant behavior, that I refer to as "aberrant of aberrant". the very nature of which, that makes this job solvable...

In summary, this is an excellent work of non fiction. The only hesitation I have in recommending this work is the hideous nature of the crime. This crime fits my personal definition of obscenity. However if you are a young detective assigned to violent crimes, and really want to learn and not just "Mail it in" this is the one.... Thank You for taking the time to read this review.
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Somac
5.0 out of 5 stars Terribly sad and moving
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 30, 2023
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The book is terribly sad because it’s the story of a true event. The victims all seem so honest and sweet; normal people leading happy lives and they did not deserve to die in such a horrible way for what turned out to be completely unnecessary reasons. It haunts you how someone can treat another’s life with such disdain. Truman Capote invented the true crime narrative with this book and his style is interesting and compelling. At no time do you really ever feel sorry for the perpetrators which is good because they were completely contemptible. A truly ground breaking book that stays with you for a long time after you’ve finished it.
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FictionFan
4.0 out of 5 stars Truth is in the eye of the beholder...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 7, 2019
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In November 1959, two men drove into the small Kansas farming community of Holcomb, broke into the Clutter family’s home and brutally murdered the four occupants, Herb and Bonnie Clutter and their two teenage children, Nancy and Kenyon. Before the murderers were caught, Truman Capote decided to write about the crime, so went to Holcomb to interview friends and neighbours of the victims, residents of the town, and the men investigating the case. It wasn’t long before the perpetrators were identified and captured, so Capote continued his project by writing about the trial and its aftermath – the imprisonment and execution of the murderers, Perry Smith and Richard “Dick” Hickock. This book, first published in 1966, is the result.

Capote approaches the subject from three angles, the victims, the townspeople and the murderers, with the narrative rotating among them. The Clutters, as portrayed here, were fine people, upstanding members of their community and their church, good neighbours and well respected. The children, especially Nancy, seem almost too good to be true, and I couldn’t help but wonder how much the old adage of never speaking ill of the dead had influenced the picture Capote paints. So even at this early stage of the book, I had begun to wonder how much reliance could be placed on Capote’s account of the people involved.

This feeling grew as the book progressed and Capote recounted as if they were facts things that he could only have learned from his interviews. While this may be fair enough with regards to the innocent people involved (though even then, oral testimony, especially when given not under oath, is notoriously unreliable), taking the words of Hickock and Smith at their own evaluation and drawing inferences as to their characters from this shaky evidence left me in a kind of limbo as to whether the book should be considered “true crime” or a fictionalised novel. I believe it gets categorised as a “non-fiction novel” - a description that seems deeply contradictory and problematic to me, designed to allow inaccuracies to pass unchallenged.

To be clear, I found it extremely readable and, viewing it as fiction, the characterisation of the murderers is wholly credible. Capote seeks to understand them by going back through their early experiences for clues as to why they turned out as they did. Smith in particular had a terrible childhood, with an alcoholic mother who pretty much abandoned him and a father who was at best an intermittent presence and a disruptive one at that. Hickock is more difficult to pigeon-hole – his family seemed both respectable and caring. Capote ventures into psychiatry for answers, using the reports that were drawn up for the men by their defence team. He gives a relatively nuanced picture, neither seeking to whitewash them nor to wholly condemn.

His portrayal of the impact of this horrific crime on the small community is equally convincing. In a place where people didn’t feel the need to lock their doors at night, the intrusion of this horror seemed incredible, and Capote shows how for the first time neighbour began to suspect and fear neighbour. The arrest and conviction of the murderers couldn’t wholly put the genie back in the bottle, as Capote describes it – the townspeople’s feelings of security would never be the same.

An interesting omission is the perspective of the Clutters’ two older daughters, neither of whom lived at home. While Capote gives us some facts about them, we don’t get to know them at all nor to learn how they fared in the future. I could only assume that they refused to be interviewed for the book.

Some of the later scenes felt too contrived to be true, and I later learned on looking at wikipedia that some of the people involved had indeed denied their truth. For example, the scene where the wife of Perry’s jailer holds his hand while he sobs after being sentenced to death felt like something written for a Cagney film (or perhaps copied from one). And the super convenient final scene, played out between the chief investigator and one of the friends of young Nancy, now all grown up, provides a heartwarming conclusion of the restoration of order and the rebirth of all that is good and hopeful in life, and I didn’t believe a single word of it. According to wikipedia, the investigator later denied that it ever happened.

So I have very mixed feelings about the book overall. It’s not got the essential truth to be true crime, and yet it’s presented too factually to really be considered a novel. And yet, it is beautifully written and intensely readable, and while it may not have factual truth, it feels as if, with regards to the personalities of the murderers, it may have achieved some kind of emotional truth – certainly emotional credibility, at any rate. I quite understand why it has a reputation as a classic of the genre – I’m just not sure what genre it’s a classic of. Perhaps it should be viewed as a one-off, uncategorisable. And as such, I’m happy to recommend it.
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Mark S. Fleeton
5.0 out of 5 stars Great product. Speedy delivery.
Reviewed in Germany on August 4, 2023
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The book arrived fast and was in excellent condition.
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Lady Fancifull
5.0 out of 5 stars Unsettling, uncomfortable account of a real crime – The Clutter Murders of 1959
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 1, 2017
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Truman Capote’s 1966 account of a notorious, barely motive-driven rural multiple murder which took place in Kansas in 1959 catapulted him into the best seller lists and celebrity status.

An upstanding, hard-working family from Holcomb, a small community in the wheat-plains of western Kansas, were brutally murdered by person or persons unknown, in November 1959. The Clutter family, Herb, church-going, teetotal dairy cattle-farmer, his rather delicate but equally upstanding wife Bonnie, and his two children, 16 year old Nancy, vivacious, popular, responsible, admired, and her bookish 15 year old brother Kenton were all shot at point-blank range, having previously been tied up. Herb Clutter also had his throat cut before being shot.

Inevitably, investigation first turned to possible personal and local motive, but there was no evidence at all to suggest this. The community was a tight-knit, respectable, co-operative one, and all the Clutters were warmly regarded by their colleagues, peers, friends, family and neighbours

“The hitherto peaceful congregation of neighbours and old friends had suddenly to endure the unique experience of distrusting each other; understandably, they believed that the murderer was amongst themselves”

The conclusion was that this might have been a burglary which went wrong. The idea of this definitely ruled out local involvement as everyone knew that Clutter did not keep money or valuables in the house, but banked it

The crime seemed to point towards something of a growing trend – murder without any real personal motive. There have always been such, in times past, but, for obvious reasons, they were more likely to take place in crowded cities, where perpetrators could quickly vanish amongst the hordes. Such crimes in isolated areas, carried out by perpetrators completely unknown, where victim and murderer had no direct connection with each other, must have been comparatively rare before owning cars became common, so that going on the run and being able to hide anywhere, became easily possible.

The perpetrators of this crime, after an intense investigation, were found to be a couple of small time crooks, who had met whilst serving time, far away from the scene of the crime. The successful solving of the crime, not to mention the capture of the pair, also depended on chance as much as skill, and the existence of mass-media (radio, TV) to highlight awareness of the crime and the search. The motive was indeed a robbery gone wrong, with the murderers, neither of whom had ever met Clutter, unaware that this rich man did not have a safe in his house (as they had assumed he would)

Truman Capote’s account of the case, originally serialised in The New Yorker, was rather a literary, ground-breaking one. The book was extensively researched from documents and interviews, but Capote structured this like a converging story, rather than a linear account. The structure, the language and the shaping are that of story, not journalistic reportage. Indeed, levelled against the book was criticism (particularly locally) that some dialogue had been invented, and small human touches and potent images had been invented.

Interestingly, his researcher on the book was his friend, and later, admired author, in her own right, Harper Lee. She is one of the two people Capote dedicates the book to.

The crime was indeed a gory one, but Capote withholds the gory details until near the end of the book, Instead, he paints a low-key, un-histrionic , unheroic, un-villainous picture of all the individuals associated with the case – this includes the victims, the murderers and all connected in the investigation, bringing to justice, and the community in which these events happened.

The author avoids operatic, overblown rhetoric. The reader (well, this one) has the sense of an author listening for a way to tell a shocking story in a simple, measured way, allowing the events themselves to be revealed in a way which suggests they have objective existence, and are not driven by authorial agenda. Nonetheless, the choices he made do of course shape the reader’s own perceptions. This is not a mere recounting of facts, but the reader is not being punched by the writer’s persona. Nonetheless, it is obvious that Capote did feel a kind of fascination with one of the perpetrators, whose status as half Cherokee, half-Irish, child of a broken marriage, whose mother was an alcoholic, and who spent part of his childhood in a brutal care home, marked his card, somewhat from the start. A classic outsider who FELT like an outsider to himself. Capote, himself an outsider, clearly felt some kind of – if not sympathy, than an identification of ‘outsiderness’

Unlike a more modern trend in some ‘true crime’ writing, Capote avoids a ramping up of the gory details of the undoubtedly gory crime. He is not trying to titillate or be gratuitous, Instead, there is a cool restraint. There is of course no ‘excuse’ for the crime, but there is a recognition that the fact that these types of crime occur shows ‘something’ about human nature. Because the writer does not go the route of ‘aberrant, demonic, despicable, bestial monsters’ the reader is uncomfortably forced to acknowledge this too is the possibility of human choice, human behaviour.
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Allie
5.0 out of 5 stars A good read
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 27, 2023
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I returned again after many years - to read this book. It is surprisingly undated. A fascinating read.
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