Rating: 
Summary: Birth of a Genre.
Review: The greatest authors don't write formula fiction or non-fiction, they create the template themselves. Truman Capote did this with In Cold Blood, the chilling dissection of a brutal and mysteriously nonsensical American crime. The True Crime category he founded has been used and enjoyed many times since.Capote does so many things right in this book that his writing gift becomes immediately obvious. Following the footsteps of the two criminals and analyzing their flawed motivations is both instructive and entertaining. He recreates each moment of the developing disaster, building suspense with clarity and understatement, allowing the facts and reality to carry the impact, rather than fancy sensationalized verbiage. But he drills beyond the details of the crime into the psyche of the two killers, divining answers to the what seems unanswerable to rational persons: why kill these people? The result is an interesting literary platform from which both opponents and proponents of capital punishment and childhood intervention can preach. I find corollary with Wambaugh's The Onion Field. Can't go wrong with this one. --Christopher Bonn Jonnes, author of Wake Up Dead.
Rating:
Summary: True Crime
Review: The Clutters could be your friends, your family, your neighbors ... or you. A respected and loved Kansas farm family who built rich and promising lives for themselves, the Clutters' deaths came as a horrific shock to their friends, family and region. Capote writes about the depravity that ended their lives violently and horrifically in 1959 when two callous criminals targeted them based on a prison rumor that the family had a safe in which they kept a large amount of cash. But the murder wasn't just about robbing the family, as Capote recounts. These men brought their pasts and their malignant personalities with them, and when you read the account of that terrible night, you won't believe such horror could exist inside two "good old boys." Capote sets up the novel expertly, building a suspense you might not think could exist. After all, we know they are murdered, it happens right away. Capote sets it up artfully by writing that it happened and then tracing the backgrounds and the paths of the killers up to the night of the murder itself, so that the details (yes, gory) of the multiple homicide are the climax of the book. Like a Shakespearean drama, there's a "fifth act" of some resolution regarding the fates of the killers and some of the Clutter family friends. It reads like a novel and oh, how you wish it were only fiction. Reading this book will illustrate Capote's power as a writer and story teller. It really isn't to be missed.
Rating:
Summary: A stunner
Review: Doesn't it say something about this book first published nearly 40 years ago, and yet had nearly 200 reviews here as recent as the month this is being written? (March,'04). I had been meaning to read ICB for years and am I glad that I did. Capote was a prominent figure in gossip columns for years, but his fame was well earned: the man could write. In a nutshell, two punks murder a family of four when they attempt to loot a non-existent safe. (Ironically, Mr Clutter, the father, was notorious for always writing checks - he never kept cash around.) Like when the inner city sniper's bullet hits a good kid, that's what happened here. The Clutter family were just good people, not without their problems. Mrs Clutter had emotional problems, yet her daughter, Nancy was Miss Popular. The girl even taught a neighbor how to bake a cherry pie on an already busy Sat. In fact, whenever I read the parts with Nancy's friend Sue Kidwell after the murder, I was always moved to tears. Capote never knew the Clutters, but he paints a vivid portrait of these four people (there was also a son murdered that night) that makes you feel as if you know them. They are not just a statistic. You also have to remember that this happened in 1959 when such a thing was more of a rarity then it is today. The reader mourns for the Clutters, yet also for Perry Smith, the slime bag who did the killings along with his partner Richard Hicock. Perry is disadvantaged almost from the start. You see that he never had a chance. Yet, I never felt that he did not get his just desserts (hanging). His story acts a treatise on the effects of a childhood spent without the support of a strong, loving family.
Rating: 
Summary: Capote's Classic
Review: Mr. Capote did us a great service in probing every facet of the tragic murder of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas. But for his careful research and lucid prose, the courage of the Clutters, and the savagery of their murder, made all the more tragic by the quality of the family's character, might well have gone unrecognized. Although our era scarcely needs another shocking crime about which to read, In Cold Blood is worth re-visiting. At one level, Capote's book reminds us just how much has changed in a relatively short span of time. It is almost impossible in today's world to imagine reporters waiting anxiously in Holcomb for the return by car of the accused killers; now, even cities of modest size would have dispatched any number of helicopters to hover over the vehicles in transit and the footage would be delivered to our living rooms, and we would find ourselves addicted to the sound of the copters and the chatter of reporters. At another level, the book shows how little has changed. The murder of the Clutters is a modern story, a sad precursor to our own violent times. Capote knew that Holcomb, Kansas was a tale of innocence lost after the passing of the Clutter family. Now we know it was not just Holcomb's loss.
Rating:
Summary: A true story of a murder
Review: Author Truman Capote wanted to write a book by applying "techniques of fiction to a fact-based story" and the result is arguably Truman Capote's most famous work, In Cold Blood. The book is the fascinating account of an actual murder of an innocent family in southwestern Kansas. Four members of the unsuspecting Clutter family were methodically and viciously murdered on their farm in mid November back in 1959. The crime was a mystery as no one had seen the murderers nor could a motive be discovered. Eventually two men are found to most likely be involved. The story is not a who-dun-it but rather an analysis of a crime and the mystery as to why two men would drive over 400 miles to kill four people who they did not know. It is this last point that provides the greater context of the story. Capote was attempting to explore the criminal mind and find some psychological motivation for criminal behavior. In Cold Blood is considered an American classic and it rightfully deserves that accolade. It was one of the first books of its kind - a novel of a true incident - and it is still one of the best books of any genre. Capote's style is leisurely, straightforward and informative and yet somehow provides the reader with enormous tension at all the right places. Furthermore, while reading the book I just couldn't help but keep thinking that this is a true story, which makes the book more horrifying.
Rating:
Summary: Just perfect!
Review: There are only a handful of "perfect" books out in the world. You know what I mean: Books that have a great dramatic arc; books that make "sense;" Books that bring everything together; Books that seem "Classic" even though they might have been written only a few years ago. A few come to mind. Steinbeck's EAST OF EDEN is one. McCrae's BARK OF THE DOGWOOD is another. And, yes, IN COLD BLOOD is yet a third. There are a few more, but then, everyone has their opinion, so I'll leave it at that. Suffice it to say that this Capote book will NOT disappoint you with its great yet disturbing story. And lest you think that we're (as a society) numb to murder, violence, and the workings of a sick mind, think again, for Capote's brilliant work will still make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. It sounds cliche to say "Classic" but that's just what it is.
Rating:
Summary: In Cold Blood, an undeniable classic.
Review: In Cold Blood by Truman Capote is a celebrated meld of fact and inference. In it Capote pioneered the genre of the nonfiction novel. Using the real-life murder of the Clutter family in 1959 Holcomb Kansas, Capote spins a story that impresses and engages everyone who reads it. The original way Capote uses scenes creates a specific and lasting impression. His take on the Clutter murders is all-encompassing. It's informative, accurate and saturated with details. Capote transforms a news article into a creative work and makes history doing it. I thoroughly enjoyed In Cold Blood. Even though the Clutter family was murdered 50 years ago, when I read it the story it felt immediate and pertinent. The psychological insights Capote made in the book, especially when looking at Perry, were phenomenal and ahead of his time. In Cold Blood read like a romance novel with the added intensity of knowing that the content was real; that it actually happened. The connection Capote makes to the Perry is so deep that it left me feeling that Perry was almost the good guy, and although it was inevitable, he wouldn't end up being executed. I suppose that is the real difference between fiction and nonfiction: in nonfiction that author can't twist the plot to create a happy ending.
Rating:
Summary: One of the five all-time great reads
Review: This book is still holding its own after all these years, and with good reason: It's a well-crafted piece of literature by one of the last century's great American writers. Without a doubt, this is one of the top five books that everyone should read and keep. Not only did Capote develop a new hybrid of book, but he managed to couch the tale in such wonderful prose that it's still haunting and harrowing, even today after all we've seen and been through. But this is the essence of Capote--his ability to get down to the bones of the story, yet give us enough details that make the telling come alive with a fresh horror. And as if this book were not enough of a legacy for him to leave, consider how he changed all literature that came after "In Cold Blood." So many writers have taken their cue from Capote with regard to hybridizing genres (think Berendt's "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil," or Jackson McCrae's "The Bark of the Dogwood") that it is impossible to ignore the contributions this brilliant and damaged man has made to the cannon of American literature. But don't be put off by the fact that "Blood" is now a classic--read it for the brilliant story it is. On another note, the movie is equally as harrowing, shot in black and white, with Robert Blake. The scenes in which the Clutter family is killed are some of the most disturbing footage ever to be seen on film. Bottomline: Great book, great movie, great writer.
Rating:
Summary: Capote at his best
Review: To call "In Cold Blood" a "true-crime" story is to diminish Truman Capote's enormous talent as a writer. Capote wanted to create a new form of writing which he termed the "non-fiction novel": a work of historical or contemporary fact writting in the form of a novel. To an extent, he succeeded. Rather than a dry recitation of the story of a multiple murder, "In Cold Blood" sweeps us up in the narrative much as a good work of fiction does. Except the events in this book are all too real. Capote tells us the story of the Clutter family murders in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas in 1959 from all angles: the Clutters themselves, the lowlife killers Dick Hickock and Perry Smith, and the detectives of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation who brought them to justice. We meet the Clutters first: Herb Clutter, a pillar of the community and his sensitive wife Bonnie, suffering from bouts of depression; and their two children, the popular, outgoing Nancy and the introverted Kenyon. Then there are Smith and Hickock, two small-town, small-time criminals who hit the big time in one horrendous night when they murder the entire Clutter family. And there is the KBI team that followed each slender lead to bring them to justice. Capote's narrative of the trial which lead to the conviction and execution of Hickock and Smith is as fascinating as his telling of the events which lead to their capture. We can attempt to understand what drove Smith to kill, growing up in a chaotic family; Hickock is more of an enigma. Capote presents the senior Hickocks as two caring and conscientious parents whose son rejected the principles they tried to instill in him. Can good parents raise a bad kid? Certainly the Hickocks did. Smith at least had a conscience, something Hickock never bothered about. Did they deserve to die for their crime? Capote seems to have been leaning against the death penalty in general. He emphasizes that the judge chose the strictest possible interpretation of the mental incapacity statues which might have applied to Perry Smith. The conclusion of the trial was almost foregone; the detectives had carefully built an airtight case. Hickock and Smith end up on the gallows. The book's ending is a wistful scene between the leading KBI investigator and Nancy's best friend, Susan, now a young woman entering college; just such a young woman, Capote says, that Nancy might have been had she lived to grow up. In that final scene, we see, as Capote meant us to see, the waste of six lives -- the Clutters, and the killers' own.
Rating:
Summary: In Cold Blood
Review: In the story "In Cold Blood" by Truman Capote, I found that this man's version of the story was quite interesting to me. He was very descriptive in detail of all the characters of the book by being very meticulous in his writing style. He also performed such extensive research of Holcomb by describing every little detail about the town. This book was unique because of how Truman would talk about Perry Smith and Dick Hickock in one paragraph and then the next paragraph he would switch over to the Clutter family and what they were doing. He had so much information about the Clutters that he even described how the daughter Nancy was helping a little girl learn to bake a pie. By explaining in detail of what happened the day of the murder made this book so interesting that I could not put it down until I read the whole thing. When a writer explains all of the details in this way, someone who reads this book can understand what must have happened and how surprised the town was to have this happen to such a nice family in the community. I was very impressed with how Truman was so particular in his details of the murder itself. Truman identified every piece of the murder and by doing this, I felt like I got to know every character in the book. I know that with forensics today some murders do not take as long to solve, but back in 1959 murders were very rare. This murder case was so intriguing because the police did not have all of the technology of today to help solve this murder. The murder was solved with simple police tactics and this is partially what made the book so interesting for me to read. I would recommend that anyone who likes to read books of this nature, "Cold Blood" would be of interest to them.
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