I am embarrassed to wait too long to read two brilliant true crime story novels : one of them is Helter Skelter and the other is of course this blood chilling, disturbing book I’m reviewing right now as I’m slapping my forehead. Sometimes I have hard time to prioritize my reading list and my chubby tbr may direct me wrong kind of books! But today I’m so happy to find my way to this classic after watching it’s amazing movie adaptation. After four members of Herbert Clutter family were brutally k...

This story made a huge impact on my life. There were six of us kids and come summer my mother couldn't handle all of us so she farmed me out every year to the aunts. One aunt lived in Indio. My mother put me on a Greyhound bus and nine years old; all alone with my brown paper grocery bag as luggage. I was scared to death. A Seagull hit the expansive windshield with splat of blood and feathers. Unfazed the driver merely turned on the windshield wipers and made and even bigger mess.I arrived in In...

I know this book is considered a masterpiece. I know that I’m supposed to love it and be touched by its revolutionary take on the True crime genre but for some reason I just kept falling asleep while reading it. The novel addresses many key points about crime in the late 50s, about our justice system, about the pros and cons of capital punishment. I just got a little lost in all the minutia of it. I’m glad I read the book and got a taste of Truman Capote’s work but it didn’t touched me like I th...

An absolute masterpiece of True Crime literature, In Cold Blood is both gritty and intelligent.This should be on everyone's list of Books to Read in a Lifetime. Capote's writing in this account is absolutely flawless. As many of you may know, In Cold Blood is a true account of the heinous murders of the Clutter Family in 1959-Kansas. Through Capote's words, you are transported to this small town; you get alternating accounts from the family, the killers and from other individuals close to the cr...

At the beginning, In Cold Blood reads like a classic southern gothic tale. I've read about Harper Lee hanging out with Capote while he put this thing together, and at times it feels like she greatly influenced how it was written. You meet the Clutters who are just the nicest people in the world out working hard and going to school and being awesome people in the town. And, I know there's all this controversy over how the book is written since it adds fictional conversations and thoughts that Cap...

I just wonder why it took me so long to get this masterpiece on my currently-reading shelf. What a breathtaking story! And told in the most amazing novelistic style! The cold-blooded murders in Kansas in 1956 are described by a cold, distant narrator via the interviews of the family, acquaintances, and community around the victims and the hair-raising stories of Perry and Bobby, the murderers. It is a real page-turner - I couldn't put it down! The descriptions of the youth of all the tragic prot...

"How much money did you get from the Clutters?""Between forty and fifty dollars." Top Picture Hickock, Richard Eugene (WM)28 KBI 97 093; FBI 859 273 A. Address: Edgerton, Kansas. Birthdate 6-6-31 Birthplace K.C., Kans. Height: 5-10 Weight: 175 Hair: Blond. Eyes: Blue. Build: Stout. Comp: Ruddy. Occup: Car Painter. Crime: Cheat & Defr. & Bad Checks. Paroled: 8-13-59 By: So. K.C.K.Bottom Picture Smith, Perry Edward (WM) 27-59. Birthplace: Nevada. Height: 5-4. Weight: 156 Hair: D. Brn. C...

“‘This is it, this is it, this has to be it, there’s the school, there’s the garage, now we turn south.’ To Perry [Smith], it seemed as though Dick [Hickock] were mumbling jubilant mumbo-jumbo. They left the highway, sped through a deserted Holcomb, and crossed the Santa Fe tracks. ‘The bank, that must be the bank, now we turn west – see the trees? This is it, this has to be it.’ The headlights disclosed a lane of Chinese elms; bundles of wind-blown thistle scurried across it. Dick doused the he...

Truman Capote - image from the NY Post This is one of the great ones. Capote blankets Holcomb, Kansas with his curiosity. The root of this work is a ghastly crime. Two recently released convicts, seeking a fortune that did not exist, invade the Clutter family home, tie up the four family members present and leave no witnesses. It takes some time for the perpetrators to be identified, then tracked down. Capote looks at how the townspeople react to this. Many, fearful that one of their own was re...

After I read it, I looked up pictures of the Clutter family, and just stared for about five minutes. They endured what is probably everyone’s worst fear.Having never heard anything of the Clutter murders prior to reading this book, the experience of reading it was intense, gripping, and suspenseful from beginning to end. Capote, with his impartial writing style, relayed facts and details in such a way as to give a complete character illustration of everyone involved: from each of the Clutters, t...