In Cold Blood
by Truman Capote
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Book Summary Information
Author: Truman CapoteReader: Scott Brick
Edition: Music CD
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Format: Audiobook, Unabridged
Published: 2006-01-03
ISBN: 073933364X
Publisher: Random House Audio
Book Reviews of In Cold Blood
Book Review: AS COMPELLING AS EVER
Summary: 5 Stars
A resurgence of interest in the life and work of an author occurs rather frequently. It happened with F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. Such is the case today with Truman Capote, probably due in large part to the acclaimed film "Capote" with an award-winning performance by Philip Seymour Hoffman.
There is another fine performance in store for us with the audio edition of what many consider to be Capote's masterpiece, In Cold Blood, read by Scott Brick. A winner of AudioFile's coveted Golden Voice Award as well as several Earphone Awards, Brick is a veteran of film, television and radio work who seems to read with an intuitive sense of the author's intention. It has been said of him that "He lets the author's words do the work." Wisely so, especially in the case of this novel which, upon publication in 1966, Life Magazine called "A masterpiece.....a spellbinding work."
As many know, this is the book in which Capote detailed the 1959 murders of a wealthy farm family in Holcomb, Kansas. It was, as Capote described it a "non-fiction novel" because the events were true yet he described them in literary form. It was a crime that shocked the nation, the slaying of Herb Clutter, his wife, and teenage son and daughter. There was no apparent reason for the carnage that took place in their home.
When Capote read of the murders in the New York Times, he and his friend Harper Lee (To Kill A Mockingbird) went to Kansas where they interviewed the citizens of Holcomb and investigators. He would later have access to the two men apprehended for the killings. Capote spent years writing his novel, which is by turns a fascinating psychological study of two sociopathic murderers and an unforgettable portrait of a crime and its aftermath.
- Gail Cooke
Summary of In Cold Blood
National Bestseller
On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of the Clutter family were 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.
As Truman Capote reconstructs the murder and the investigation that led to the capture, trial, and execution of the killers, he generates both mesmerizing suspense and astonishing empathy. In Cold Blood is a work that transcends its moment, yielding poignant insights into the nature of American violence.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
"Until one morning in mid-November of 1959, few Americans--in fact, few Kansans--had ever heard of Holcomb. Like the waters of the river, like the motorists on the highway, and like the yellow trains streaking down the Santa Fe tracks, drama, in the shape of exceptional happenings, had never stopped there." If all Truman Capote did was invent a new genre--journalism written with the language and structure of literature--this "nonfiction novel" about the brutal slaying of the Clutter family by two would-be robbers would be remembered as a trail-blazing experiment that has influenced countless writers. But Capote achieved more than that. He wrote a true masterpiece of creative nonfiction. The images of this tale continue to resonate in our minds: 16-year-old Nancy Clutter teaching a friend how to bake a cherry pie, Dick Hickock's black '49 Chevrolet sedan, Perry Smith's Gibson guitar and his dreams of gold in a tropical paradise--the blood on the walls and the final "thud-snap" of the rope-broken necks.
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