Review: In Cold Blood

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

On November 15, 1959, in a quiet town in western Kansas, a family of four were sound asleep resting up for another day on the prairie. It would be their last night alive. During the night two men, Dick Hickock and Perry Smith broke into the home of Herbert Clutter with the expectation to rob the family of the tens of thousands of dollars apparently sitting in a home office safe. There was no safe and there was only $40 total in the house. The men planned to leave no witnesses, executing the four members of the Clutter family still living at home. The murderers and would-be thieves left quietly in the night and thought they were scot-free.

Truman Capote follows the movement of the Clutters and Hickock and Perry through the days leading up to the murders, the night of the murder, and the aftermath including the eventual arrest and trial of the criminals. The reader also learns their eventual fate. Capote's work is based on facts and interviews of the case but reads like a novel. Written in 1965, this book is an early example of true crime stories and is still a best selling book.

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