In Cold Blood
by Truman CapoteThe reporting of a Kansas murder, written with the pacing and interiority of a novel and the discipline of journalism.
Why we chose it
A dual-featured title on our shelf. Read it for the craft as much as the case, and notice how rarely the prose raises its voice.
Capote follows a killing in rural Kansas from the last ordinary evening of a family to the long procedural aftermath, reconstructing the lives of everyone the crime touched.
The book invented a form. It reads as narrative while insisting on the accuracy of reportage, and it still sets the standard our true crime readers measure everything against.
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Reader reviews
“I closed it and sat still for ten minutes”
Every month I finish a book and immediately want to call the seven other people who read it with me. This one I could not talk about for a full day. The letters in chapter nineteen rearranged the whole novel behind me.
