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“You are a man of extreme passion, a hungry man not quite sure where his appetite lies, a deeply frustrated man striving to project his individuality against a backdrop of rigid conformity. You exist in a half-world suspended between two superstructures, one self-expression and the other self-destruction. You are strong, but there is a flaw in your strength, and unless you learn to control it the flaw will prove stronger than your strength and defeat you. The flaw? Explosive emotional reaction out of all proportion to the occasion. Why? Why this unreasonable anger at the sight of others who are happy or content, this growing contempt for people and the desire to hurt them? All right, you think they're fools, you despise them because their morals, their happiness is the source of your frustration and resentment. But these are dreadful enemies you carry within yourself--in time destructive as bullets. Mercifully, a bullet kills its victim. This other bacteria, permitted to age, does not kill a man but leaves in its wake the hulk of a creature torn and twisted; there is still fire within his being but it is kept alive by casting upon it faggots of scorn and hate. He may successfully accumulate, but he does not accumulate success, for he is his own enemy and is kept from truly enjoying his achievements.�

Truman Capote's In Cold Blood stands the test of crime in literary circles concerning our fascination with tales of true crime and the consequences of this morbid curiosity. Historically not the very first true crime novel, In Cold Blood nonetheless laid the foundation of all the authors who went on to approach true crime in a gripping narrative-style fashion. Authors like Vincent Bugliosi, Ann Rule, Erik Larson, David Grann, and Michelle McNamara all owe a debt of gratitude to Capote.

In Cold Blood is most interesting not only for Capote traversing a new path in narrative driven non-fiction, but how it connects with everyone involved in the Clutter family murders. You as a reader feel sympathy for not only friends and family of the Clutters in the local Kansas community, but gain an almost understanding of the psychology of the two murders, Perry Smith and Richard Hickok. Much of the book is spent examining the backstories of these two men and how they eventually ended up committing the Clutter murders that faithful night in Holcomb Kansas. Sympathy might be the wrong word chosen to feel for them, but Capote's intension was for the reader to at least understand them both a bit, particularly Smith, whom he seems to connect with on a certain level. Everyone is treated as a character to help the story stay interesting. It's hard to determine what liberties Capote took in telling this story, but for the most part it appears to be a faithful retelling of events as they transpired. Based on the fact that Capote never wrote another true book after this, it must have greatly impacted him in the years he researched and wrote this narrative.

Rating: 4.5/5