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In Cold Blood: A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequences (Vintage... by Truman Capote
Reader Reviews 3 of 3 people found the following review helpful: Pinnacle of the True Crime genre, October 9, 2003 Reviewer: A.J. from Maryland The smelly, hairy armpit of every bookstore is its True Crime section, shelved with scores of Ann Rule-styled mass-market paperbacks with black covers and fluorescent-lettered titles intended to shock, promising pages of murder and mayhem illustrated by grainy black-and-white photos, ultimately delivering banality in a glossy package. However, Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood," although sharing the purpose of the company it keeps, is a diamond in the rough. With sharp psychological insight and prose that is lithe and sophisticated without assuming an opulence that risks overdressing its grisly subject matter, Capote writes like he sincerely cares about not just the victims and the murderers, but everybody involved in the investigation of the case and then some. The case is fairly simple: On a November night in 1959 in the tiny western Kansas prairie town of Holcomb, two ex-convicts, Dick Hickock and Perry Smith, entered a farm house belonging to the Clutters, one of the richest and most respected families in the county, tied up Herb Clutter, his wife Bonnie, his son Kenyon, and his daughter Nancy with cords and killed them with a shotgun. The motive is not difficult to deduce from the outset; by introducing the killers early, Capote fashions the book not as a mystery but as a study of criminal behavior. In leading up to the crime, the narration alternates between the domestic tranquility of the Clutter family, a picture so innocent and wholesomely American it belongs on a Christmas card, and the sinister machinations and bizarre delusions of the killers as they travel hundreds of miles to Holcomb to do their deed. After the murders have been committed, leaving the town horrified and puzzled, the book follows Dick and Perry's cross-country trips in search of the next big score while special agents from the Kansas Bureau of Investigation probe the crime scene for evidence (the killers cleverly leave almost none) and interrogate the few witnesses who have anything to say. Capote manages to relate something valuable about every person the investigation encounters, from a gas station attendant to the woman who runs Holcomb's post office, so the book reads like a novel of rich characterization. An inevitable breakthrough in the case leads to the arrest of Dick and Perry, who have not covered their tracks well. From here, Capote examines the relevant details of their trial, in which they are convicted, and their appeals while they await execution on Death Row. Even to the very end we are continually informed that the book's devotion is to its killers' life stories, given clinical treatment during the trial in which we hear (off the record) professional psychoanalyses that attempt to explain how a man might become a monster. Although "In Cold Blood" could be criticized for apparently sympathizing with the killers, it manages to acknowledge their humanity without apologizing for or attempting to justify their violent actions.
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