This is the story of an innocent, hard-working family from Holcomb, Kansas: mother, Father, son, and daughter, who were viciously murdered on their ranch in 1959. It's a senseless crime that will leave a bad taste in your mouth, and more importantly, check to ensure every door and window is locked.

Capote leads you into each of their lives, and the lives and trial of the murderers: Richard Hickcock and Perry Smith. It gives the reader of look into the complexities of human nature.

A deep dive into the killers' personalities gives us a tour throughout their lives, and how it helped shape them and distort them into the killers they had become. Richard Hickcock's life seemed better than many others, especially other criminals. Perry Smith's, however, was riddled with abuse and neglect.

I think that of all of the victims, my heart went out the most to the sixteen-year-old girl, Nancy. She seemed like such a bright light with a promising future. She was very sociable and would do everything she could to be a help to others. Indeed, all of the Clutters were about as innocent of victims as one could imagine. It was a horrific crime that should never have taken place.

The Clutters have two surviving girls who lived away from home at the time of this nefarious crime.

True Crime Fans

The background of everyone

Sometimes the descriptions of the surroundings got a bit too drawn out

Truman Capote was born in New Orleans in 1925 and was raised in various parts of the south, his family spending winters in New Orleans and summers in Alabama and New Georgia. By the age of fourteen he had already started writing short stories, some of which were published. He left school when he was fifteen and subsequently worked for the New Yorker which provided his first - and last - regular job. Following his spell with the New Yorker, Capote spent two years on a Louisiana farm where he wrote Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948). He lived, at one time or another, in Greece, Italy, Africa and the West Indies, and travelled in Russia and the Orient. He is the author of many highly praised books, including A Tree of Night and Other Stories (1949), The Grass Harp (1951), Breakfast at Tiffany's (1958), In Cold Blood (1965), which immediately became the centre of a storm of controversy on its publication, Music for Chameleons (1980) and Answered Prayers (1986), all of which are published by Penguin. Truman Capote died in August 1984.

343 Pages
(Re)Published 1994
4.5 Rating
#6 in Criminology
#37 in U.S. State & Local History (Books)
#39 in Murder & Mayhem True Accounts

426 Words

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