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In Cold Blood

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In Cold Blood

Written by: Truman Capote
Narrated by: Scott Brick
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Truman Capote’s masterpiece of true crime, intensely researched and vividly atmospheric—“as it if were happening before [the reader’s] very eyes” (Time)

“Harrowing . . . The best documentary account of an American crime ever written. . . . The book chills the blood and exercises the intelligence.”—The New York Times Book Review

On November 15th, 1959, Richard Eugene Hickock and Perry Edward Smith brutally murdered the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas. This superb work, an exhaustively researched narrative of the lives of the family and the men who killed them, created a sensation when it was first published, serially, in The New Yorker in 1965.

Perry Smith is one of the great dark characters of American literature, full of contradictory emotions. “I thought he was a very nice gentleman,” he says of Herb Clutter. “Soft-spoken. I thought so right up to the moment I cut his throat.” Told in chapters that alternate between the Clutter household and the approach of Smith and Hickock in their black Chevrolet, then between the investigation of the case and the killers’ flight, Capote’s account is so detailed that the reader comes to feel almost like a participant in the events. Americas Criminology Murder Social Sciences True Crime United States
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Critic Reviews

“A masterpiece . . . a spellbinding work.”—Life

“A remarkable, tensely exciting, superbly written ‘true account.’”—The New York Times

“The best documentary account of an American crime ever written . . . The book chills the blood and exercises the intelligence. . . . Harrowing.”—The New York Review of Books
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The book is interesting and well researched. It is a little too slow in parts where Capote has focused on small elements that could have been passed over. The book could have been more crisp. Narration is clear and decent voice modulation. Overall this makes for a good one time listen/read.

Interesting; a little slow

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With his clear and vivid descriptions Truman Capote not only immortalises the Clutters and all the things associated with them but also compels the reader to examine the complex mental states of the murderers whose grusome deeds have stunned us all.

Now had it not been for Scott Bric's rivetting narration I'd have not enjoyed this classic work for these days I don't get time to read anything in print.

Creative nonfiction at its best...!!!

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Scott Brick's narration is excellent, but Capote's writing felt completely wrong.
Capote’s In Cold Blood is often praised as a literary masterpiece, but I found it deeply flawed—both structurally and ethically. I usually rate nonfiction highly, especially when it’s grounded in journalistic integrity. But In Cold Blood felt more like a fictionalized version of a true crime than a faithful recounting. Capote’s decision to write private conversations among the Clutter family—moments no one could have witnessed—was disconcerting. Critics like Jack Olsen were right: this is more a dramatized retelling of a true crime than a journalistic account.
Capote’s obsession with this particular murder case is puzzling. There were other, more gruesome or perplexing crimes at the time—some unsolved—but he spent five years on this one, and never published another book afterward. It feels like this story consumed him, and the result is a narrative that’s bloated and repetitive.
The killers, especially Perry Smith, are given excessive attention. His backstory is retold at least four times—through flashbacks, letters, family accounts, and his own writings. We hear about his bedwetting, his army stint, and his troubled childhood repeatedly. If Capote intended to evoke sympathy, it backfired. I didn’t sympathize with Perry—I grew increasingly angry with the author.
Meanwhile, the victims—the Clutter family—are respectfully portrayed but quickly fade from the narrative. Capote inserts red herrings (like Nancy smelling smoke) that are never revisited, and includes irrelevant details (e.g., a Japanese family, a British woman’s stay in town) that serve no clear purpose.
Even the investigative angle is diluted by tangents into Detective Dewey’s family life and his wife’s dreams. The structure is messy, and the pacing suffers. I had to speed it up to audio to 2x just to finish. Every time the book went back to recounting Perry's backstory, I had to pause, take a deep breath, read and like some 1- and 2-star reviews on Goodreads just to avoid going back to the book.
Compared to Helter Skelter, which sticks to facts and avoids fictionalizing real people, In Cold Blood feels like a betrayal of its genre.

Capote’s Obsession: Perry Over the Clutters

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