Author: Truman Capote
Number of Pages: 396
Rating: ☆☆☆☆
Review:
The book “In Cold Blood” while at a first glance is just like any other murder mystery book, the author very quickly takes in a completely different direction than any other by creating sympathy for both the victims and one of their murderers. The book starts out by introduction the Clutters, a family of four who live on a farm in a small town in Kansas and are all considered very popular and involved with the town ongoings. Herb, Barbara, Nancy, and Kenyon's last day is described in detail before the introduction of Richard Hickock and Perry Smith the men who murdered them. The book goes on the describe the backgrounds of the two killers, what they did after the murders, and the police's investigation.
The focus of this book is unique as it is more focused on the murderers and their thoughts and backgrounds than on the victims or the police. The book focusing on the childhoods that they had, the end of the book making it clear how Perry and Dick had two largely different childhoods that have you giving more sympathy for Perry and condemning Dick more with the explanations of how they grew up. Throughout “In Cold Blood” the author builds up sympathy in the reader for not only the Clutter’s but also for Perry and what happened to lead him to killing, while greatly contrasting with how the author describes Dick with leaves the reader with no sympathy or connection to him at all.
In this novel the author's writing is generally passive as he tells the story, he doesn't add very many if any of his own opinions to the book. Letting the people in it tell it from their perspective without comment only adding in brief sentences at times what happened to a minor character after the book ends. He wrote using different literary techniques on different characters to make them more or less sympathetic or interesting depending on the information he was giving and the person whose point of view he was writing from, which could differ between Perry, Dick, the Main investigator, and various other community members who added to the story. I would recommend this book to people who enjoy mysteries, learning about the daily lives of normal people went through a tragedy or the inside of a killer.
I think thats a really interesting way to write a murder mystery. Building that little bit of sympathy in the victims as well as the killers can really catch the emotion of the reader.
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