**"There's got to be something wrong with somebody who'd do a thing
like that." This is Perry Edward Smith, talking about himself.
"Deal me out, baby... I'm a normal." This is Richard Eugene
Hickock, talking about himself. They're as sick a pair as Leopold
and Loeb and together they killed a mother, a father, a pretty
seventeen year old and her brother, none of whom they'd seen
before, in cold blood. A couple of days before they had bought a
100 foot rope to garrote them - enough for ten people if necessary.
This small pogrom took place in Holcomb, Kansas, a lonesome town on
a flat, limitless landscape: a depot, a store, a cafe, two filling
stations, 270 inhabitants. The natives refer to it as "out there."
It occurred in 1959 and Capote has spent five years, almost all of
the time which has since elapsed, in following up this crime which
made no sense, had no motive, left few clues - Just a footprint and
a remembered conversation. Capote's alternating dossier Shifts from
the victims, the Clutter family, to the boy who had loved Nancy
Clutter, and her best friend, to the neighbors, and to the recently
paroled perpetrators: Perry, with a stunted child's legs and a
changeling's face, and Dick, who had one squinting eye but a "smile
that works." They had been cellmates at the Kansas State
Penitentiary where another prisoner had told them about the
Clutters - he'd hired out once on Mr. Clutter's farm and thought
that Mr. Clutter was perhaps rich. And this is the lead which
finally broke the case after Perry and Dick had drifted down to
Mexico, back to the midwest, been seen in Kansas City, and were
finally picked up in Las Vegas. The last, even more terrible
chapters, deal with their confessions, the law man who wanted to
see them hanged, back to back, the trial begun in 1960, the
post-ponements of the execution, and finally the walk to "The
Corner" and Perry's soft-spoken words - "It would be meaningless to
apologize for what I did. Even inappropriate. But I do. I
apologize."... It's a magnificent Job - this American tragedy -
with the incomparable Capote touches throughout. There may never
have been a perfect crime, but if there ever has been a perfect
reconstruction of one, surely this must be it. (Kirkus Reviews)
Controversial and compelling, In Cold Blood reconstructs the murder in 1959 of a Kansas farmer, his wife and both their children. Truman Capote's comprehensive study of the killings and subsequent investigation explores the circumstances surrounding this terrible crime and the effect it had on those involved. At the centre of his study are the amoral young killers Perry Smith and Dick Hickcock, who, vividly drawn by Capote, are shown to be reprehensible yet entirely and frighteningly human.
The book that made Capote's name, In Cold Blood is a seminal work of modern prose, a remarkable synthesis of journalistic skill and powerfully evocative narrative.
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