Boy, do I love this book. I hadn’t read it since college when I brought it on a plane to Barcelona. I was spending a semester abroad, and our program started in Madrid. We were packed into hotel rooms with 3 or 4 twin beds, filled with 3 or 4 other American students who were looking to improve their Spanish skills, meet new people, and get outside their comfort zones.
Too tired to join the group at whatever local bar they were exploring that first night, I tucked myself into the creaky twin and opened the paperback copy of IN COLD BLOOD I’d swiped from my parents’ house before my departure. The terrifying and true story Truman Capote tells filled me with fear. I was torn between the desire to slam the cover shut and hide under my blankets and the need to see what happened next. Finally, the heebie jeebies overtook me. I closed the book, left the lamp burning brightly, and tried to sleep as I waited for my roommates to return.
You might be familiar with the fabulous 2006 movie CAPOTE, starring Phillip Seymour Hoffman in the eponymous role. The movie follows Truman as he researches and writes this revolutionary book. It won Academy Awards for best adapted screenplay, best supporting actress, best actor, best director, and best picture. It was truly marvelous. The book with which the movie is concerned is no less astounding.
The jacket copy explains, “On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of the Clutter family are savagely murdered by blasts from a shotgun held a few inches from their faces. There was no apparent motive for the crime, and there were almost no clues…Five years, four months and twenty-nine days later, Richard Eugene Hickock and Perry Edward Smith were hanged for the crime on a gallows in a warehouse in the Kansas State Penitentiary in Lansing, Kansas…In Cold Blood is the story of the lives and deaths of these six people.”
If the teaser doesn’t grab you, give the first 3 pages a try. Capote’s prose is absolutely spellbinding. You feel like you’re right there on the desolate, windswept Kansas prairie when the sense of security, the small-town neighborliness, the wholesome innocence of rural life is utterly shattered by the violence of that November night. The tension as Capote toggles back and forth between the perspectives of the murderers and their soon-to-be victims will keep your nose deep in this book. Getting to know the killers, as well as their victims, is a strange and affecting process. If you’re a fan of true crime podcasts (**this is me raising my hand**), you’ve just found your new favorite book. And if you plan on watching CAPOTE, do yourself a favor and read IN COLD BLOOD first. This book is a classic for a reason.
