Reviews with content warning for Murder - In Cold Blood

I can totally see how this became a hit and completely redefined the way true crime was written. I didn't think it would take too long to read when I first started, and my copy wasn't very thick, but this book is dense. I could read for 45 minutes and discover that I'd only read 10-12 pages.

It's also probably the first book where I've had to write out all the names, because the first third or so of the book throws dozens of people at you, some you never really see again, and some you do. So it's hard to know who is going to be important until the story unfolds.

Also, as you get deeper into the book, it becomes less about the true crime, and morphs into a study of the killers' lives, one in particular. By the end it's obvious that this was done to show that criminal psychology is complex and not as black and white as it was believed back in the 1950s. But the reader doesn't really know that while slogging through the middle of the book, which is bogged down with pages and pages of letters and biopyschosocial history.

Still, glad I read it, and it's probably a must for any true crime lover.

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lanaaa21's review against another edition

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4.5

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emilyhcox's review against another edition

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dark informative reflective sad tense slow-paced

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henrygravesprince's review against another edition

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dark mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

3.75

Capote’s prose is masterful, but the non-fiction aspect was handled in a way I don’t find responsible, and I think that, as one of the first major modern true crime media “sensations”, In Cold Blood embodies many of the same problems that true crime media, particularly dramatizations, maintains today. I don’t dislike Capote, and in fact I quite like his writing for the most part, but I couldn’t in good conscience give this book a wholly glowing review. There would still be issues if I looked at it the way one looks at fiction, but monumentally less — that said, it is not purely fiction, and I can’t look at this novel & not be acutely aware of the fact that these were real people & the facts were embellished in ways that can’t really be brushed off, in my opinion.

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