Authors: Truman Capote, Bob Colacello
ISBN-13: 9780375507908, ISBN-10: 0375507906
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Date Published: March 2002
Edition: Reissue
When Truman Capote debuted on the New York literary scene in 1948, no one had seen anything quite like him. Capote soon became famous for his intensely readable and nuanced short stories, novels, and novellas, but he was equally famous as a personality, gadfly, and bon vivant -- not to mention as a crime writer. Capote s much-imitated 1965 book, In Cold Blood, all but invented the narrative true-crime genre.
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.
There are two Truman Capotes. One is the artful charmer, prone to the gossamer and the exquisite, of the The Grass Harp and Holly Golightly. The other, darker and stronger, is the discoverer of death. He has traveled far from the misty, moss-hung, Southern-Gothic landscapes of youth. He now broods with the austerity of a Greek or an Elizabethan.