A review by trin
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

4.0

Indeed groundbreaking: beautifully, sensitively written. Capote builds tension masterfully; everything up through the murders unfolds with mounting menace, skating right up to the edge of melodrama but never quite toppling over. In some of the later chapters, Capote gets bogged down in psychoanalysis, and everything about Hickock and Smith's road trip is painted with such a heavy coat of homoeroticism it practically becomes a series of Tom of Finland paintings. But the setting, the people -- all of it comes alive so potently. Capote makes of this nasty, awful, senseless crime a capital-T Tragedy.

You can feel his sympathy for the killers, in particular Perry Smith, and the problematic aspects of this book could (and have and will) be endlessly discussed -- but that's precisely what makes it such an enduring classic.