In Cold Blood in Catching up on Classics (and lots more!)

Aug 09, 2015 Michele rated it really liked it · review of another edition

The original true crime novel, the book that birthed the genre. I grew up in Kansas and my grandfather was one of the KBI agents that investigated this case, yet somehow I had never read it until the Literary Darkness group picked it for a group read this summer.

Much has been said about the liberties Capote allegedly took with events, facts, and people in the case, so much so that the surviving Clutter daughters refused to give interviews on the murders for forty years. One does get the sense th ...more

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Nov 27, 2009 Laura rated it it was amazing

Shelves: read-2010, true-crime, bookcrossing, 1001-books-you-must-read-before-you, contemporary-fiction, banned-books, book-and-movie, legal-thriller

From IMDb:
After a botched robbery results in the brutal murder of a rural family, two drifters elude police, in the end coming to terms with their own mortality and the repercussions of their vile atrocity.

A bookcrossing book which just arrived from Germany.

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Jan 20, 2020 Nola Tillman rated it it was amazing

Shelves: nonfiction-historical, fiction-crime-novel, 1001-books-to-read

I remember hearing, some time back, that this novel was gruesome, and so avoided it for that reason. Lately, however, I've been reading crime fiction (Michael Connolly), and decided to try the contrast.
The murder scene itself is very spartan in description, which makes sense as the book was originally published in, I believe, the Atlantic or some other similar periodical of the day. Details on the murder and the bodies were sparse and not particularly gruesome.
Far more terrifying is the attitude I remember hearing, some time back, that this novel was gruesome, and so avoided it for that reason. Lately, however, I've been reading crime fiction (Michael Connolly), and decided to try the contrast.
The murder scene itself is very spartan in description, which makes sense as the book was originally published in, I believe, the Atlantic or some other similar periodical of the day. Details on the murder and the bodies were sparse and not particularly gruesome.
Far more terrifying is the attitudes of the two killers, who are cold and unrepentant about their brutal crime. The aforementioned criminal novels and other similar reads make me suspect the two are some form of sociopath, and I'd love to read a modern day interpretation of the crime. Still, it's a chilling tale of casual random violence that could not be predicted for its victims.
Capote does an incredible job of bringing those victims to life. Originally, I thought he was describing folks who were neighbors or witnesses, but he pretty clearly lays out that it is their last days. For his contemporary audience, this would not be a surprise, but the novel stands up because he still manages to carry that suspence, only gradually dispelling it.
I call it a novel but it really isn't. A quick background review notes that all conversations come from interviews, though of course the last is perhaps the most spurious. That leads to some slight repetition of quotes but I suspect they are spread across the series and serve to draw it together; it's noticeable but not overdone.
Like Schindler's Ark, this is a somewhat fictionalized version of fact. This one came with far more records and documents, I suspect, and conversations were quickly transcribed rather than related decades later. That's not to impinge on the other, great novel; they are of similar types but differ in challenges.
Overall, a page turning read. I spent the first part growing to like the family - especially Nancy and her father, who received more press - and wanting to know why, and the second part looking for the deeper why, the thing or things that drove the killer to such heinous crimes. ...more

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Jan 29, 2017 Maggie rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: boxall-1001, fiction, true-crime, thriller, usa

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. In Cold Blood tells the true story of the murder of the Clutter family by Perry Smith and Richard Hickock. It starts off describing Herbert Clutter, a very proper and Christian high middle class rancher, his wife Bonnie who had many friends but now has a mental illness, and two of his four children, Nancy, a popular and talented girl, and Kenyon, a somewhat socially awkward boy. Perry and Dick are then introduced. Both were recently released from prison for theft and burglary. Perry was released In Cold Blood tells the true story of the murder of the Clutter family by Perry Smith and Richard Hickock. It starts off describing Herbert Clutter, a very proper and Christian high middle class rancher, his wife Bonnie who had many friends but now has a mental illness, and two of his four children, Nancy, a popular and talented girl, and Kenyon, a somewhat socially awkward boy. Perry and Dick are then introduced. Both were recently released from prison for theft and burglary. Perry was released first, with his parole requiring him never to step foot into Kansas again. Several months later, he received a letter from Dick inviting him back to Kansas to help in a money-making operation. One day, the Clutters are discovered dead, killed by bullets through their heads, and the only clue are footprints near Herbert. Four detectives led by Alvin Dewey investigate the murder, and it takes up their whole lives, but they get no reliable lead until a current inmate, Floyd Wells, who formerly worked for Mr Clutter, tells that while they were in prison together, Dick had become highly interested in the Clutter house after finding out from Wells that there was a safe there. He asked Wells for details on where every room and item was placed, and told Wells that he wanted to rob the Clutters and leave no witnesses. That Dick and Perry did, except that there was no safe. The rest of the book then details the capture of the killers, their subsequent battles with the court, and their eventual hanging.

This book, noted for establishing the true crime genre, reminds me of “based on a true story” movies. Capote wrote it by spending lots of time in Holcomb and interviewing people involved in the story. Although Capote asserted that everything in it is true, it’s obvious that some things are not. Nobody could have remembered the dialogues word for word, for example, and I doubt that the characters actually remembered and revealed some of the smaller details in interviews. And some things just happened too nicely to be convincingly true in real life. And interviews with the actual people involved have revealed that there are indeed many falsehoods in the book. It’s non-fiction, yet it’s fiction. You don’t know what is factual and what isn’t. But the general gist of the story is true, and it is a novel way of writing. For one thing, although this is essentially investigative journalling, yet the author never intrudes, except for perhaps once near the end when he reveals to a journalist, probably himself. Secondly, Capote takes investigative journalling to a story-telling level, and he is an excellent story teller. He goes behind plain facts to imagine what the characters felt and thought, bringing life to Holcomb and personality to the characters. Some facts were probably mentioned to Capote only once in an interview, maybe even as a passing remark, yet Capote creates stories from these by drawing them out over two or three scenes. At some points, I thought Capote was lucky that the crime he chose to investigate turned out to yield characters with interesting backgrounds and personalities. But on the other hand, perhaps it was his skill that gave ordinary people such interesting personalities. And for a piece of journalism, it’s well researched, with Capote interviewing lots of people, and giving life to not just the victims and the murderers, but also their family and friends, the investigators, and ordinary Holcomb citizens.

This book also falls into the inverted mystery genre, otherwise known as an inverted detective story or a howcatchem. We know from the start that Dick and Perry murdered the Clutters, but not their motive or method. This sustains the interest and mystery, and increases the shock factor when we find out that the motive was actually money, and that they never got that money.

My biggest takeaway was how human the killers were. Perry, especially, was described in a way to draw the reader’s pity. He grew up in a broken family, his father abusing his mother and his four children, and his mother becoming an alcoholic and committing suicide. Perry was pulled out of school early, went to a Catholic orphanage where he was beaten by nuns for chronic bed-wetting, and when he rejoined his father, their attempts to set up a motel for ranchers failed and Perry’s father, increasingly frustrated, threw Perry out. Perry was, as Dick said, “one of the most alone people there ever was”. Yet, as repeatedly mentioned, he had a sensitive soul, with an interest in art and vocabulary, and even in the Clutters’ house he did little kind acts like laying Mr Clutter on a mattress box so he wouldn’t have to lie on the cold floor.

Dick grew up in a completely different home. His parents were poor but loving. But he couldn’t go to college and study engineering because he didn’t have the money to, and he grew up knowing what poverty had denied him. But Capone painted him not as a penniless victim of circumstances, but as somewhat who was inherently mean – he purposely drove into dogs, bullied Perry, slept with prostitutes, wrote bad cheques and boasted about them, and then immediately spent the money he gained from those on vodka. Killing the Clutters was a plot dreamed up entirely by Dick. And even after the murders, while Perry felt guilty, Dick seemed without regret. Ironically, he only thing Capone made us pity him for was his paedophilic desires. Dick couldn’t control them and he was ashamed of them.

So it was a shock to find out that Perry shot all four of the Clutters. When I reached this point of the book, I could not believe it. I thought someone was lying – Dick, or Perry, or both. Who was Perry? I thought I knew him. Did I really? All along, it had seemed like he was just being dragged along by Dick, and he went along with the plan because he didn’t want to lose a friend. And all of a sudden I found out that Dick actually didn’t have the guts to kill the Clutters, but Perry shot all of them, after all his little acts of kindness. How?

The answer was revealed slowly, in steps. Psychiatrists thought it was mental illness, borne out of emotional deprivation in early life, that resulted in him forming cold, shallow relationships, and performing rash, aggressive, violent acts when under stress, without feeling anger towards the victims. Like Dewey said, it was a “psychological accident”, an “impersonal act”. And certainly, later, when Dick tried to pretend he had never been involved, Perry was the first to show real courage, even changing his statement to admit that he had killed all four victims out of compassion towards Dick’s mother. Murder seemed to be not something that Perry did, but something that happened to him.

It gave me a new perspective on people who kill from temporary insanity. The public thinks of them as crazy and scary, but Perry was neither. How do we handle such people, who are dangerous without meaning to be, who can kill innocent strangers without even knowing what they are doing? On hindsight, we say we should show them mercy, but faced with the evidence at that point in time, would we?

Even Dick was eventually painted in a better light. After confessing, he fainted, and we finally saw that the murder had been on his mind, although he was perhaps more afraid of being caught than actually feeling guilty. Which was perhaps reasonable, since he hadn’t actually killed anybody. His flippancy started to reveal itself as a veneer hiding his true emotions.

Capote was an atheist, but the theme of Christianity was pervasive. It first showed itself in the Clutters, who were well-liked because they glorified God through their lives. Mr Clutter was a teetotaling, virtuous man, and Nancy was described by someone as always being busy but always having the time for you. Later, Holcomb was described as the best place to hold the trial despite the obvious prejudices the jury would have, because many of the people were Christians who would show Christian mercy. Mr Clutter’s brother, for example, spoke up to say that he was not in favour of capital punishment. The only people who befriended Perry, Willie Jay in prison, Don Sullivan after his arrest, and the undersheriff’s wife Mrs Meier, all did it out of Christian love. In a book of violence and cruelty, this little sparks of Christian goodness lighted the way. ...more

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May 07, 2020 Susannah rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: listened-to-audiobook, reading-the-classics

I appreciated this book, but it did take me almost four months to finish, I think, because I am not a fan of true crime. Also, I just didn't get Capote's fascination with Perry Smith. I mean, I know from reading about Capote (and seeing "Capote" and "Infamous," I'm not gonna lie) that he saw a parallel between Smith and himself (particularly Capote himself if he hadn't had writing to separate him from neglectful parents). The story of the Clutter family and the Holcomb, Kansas, community held my ...more

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Apr 25, 2009 Rhonda rated it really liked it

After reding a few reviews, the only item I have to add is Capote's writing style is superb. Horrible true story but superbly written and an astounding view of the depravity mankind can stoop to for $40. ...more

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