Truman Capote's writing holds a special place in my heart. Whether he's talking about a love affair or murder, his writing is just shockingly beautiful. It's like a really beautiful song that you just love hearing. This book is non-fiction and is about a family-- husband, wife, youngest daughter, and son-- who are murdered during a robbery by two men who are eventually tracked down and sentenced to death. Although all the factual details are there, it reads like fiction. Capote spent years researching this case and personally interviewing the killers while they awaited execution in prison. He got so close to them, in fact, that he befriended one of them. His close friend, Harper Lee (author of "To Kill a Mockingbird") also took part in conducting interviews and collecting research, and you'll notice that Capote dedicated this book to her. Once he finished writing it, he was so disturbed and so drained from the experience, that he never finished another novel, although up until then he was a celebrity in the literary world (I have a copy of a photograph of Truman Capote dancing with Marilyn Monroe at a party).
By the end of the book, you feel like you personally know the murdered family, which makes it even more heartbreaking. You know the killers well enough to see them as regular boys, and you start to wonder what the hell happened to them. You won't be able to sleep with the lights off; there are parts of the book that are absolutely terrifying, and the ending is perfect, understated, undramatic, just the right way to end something like this.
And after you've read this book, you should watch the movie "Capote" which earned Phillip Seymour Hoffman a best actor Oscar, and covers Capote's arduous process in writing "In Cold Blood."
I could not put this book down, I remember I was visiting Kyla and brought this book and while she was trying to hang out with me all I wanted to do was read the damn book!
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