1965

Title:

The title means a murder is committed, without any hesitation or bad feeling.

Author:

Truman Capote was born in New Orleans and is one of the Southern novelists who write in the tradition started by William Faulkner. Most of his novels take the South as their background and terror as their subject. He worked in the Hollywood film industry for some time. His books are sometimes regarded as signs of a widespread contemporary movement: a revolt against the aspirations of the novel to art and a turning on the part of the novelists themselves towards the mass audience. It implies a reaction against the ideals of Henry James; and Joseph Conrad about the novel as a work of art, which dominated the novel form throughout the first half of the twentieth century. With the immensely popular In Cold Blood (1966), Capote turned into a new path by producing what is sometimes paradoxically called a non-fiction novel, for which amore appropriate name would perhaps be documentary novel.

The literary period:

1945 till now.

The genre:

Truman Capote himself said this book was a totally new genre; he called it, paradoxically, a non-fiction novel, others might refer to it as a documentary novel. The non-fiction novel is a true, very detailed, account of an actual event, it is written in a journalistic style and tells backgrounds and thoughts of all characters. All information in this novel is obtained by research and interviews. The novel consists elements of several other genres. Because of the many psychological backgrounds and the emphasis on the thoughts and feelings of the characters, you could also call it a psychological novel. It is also a bit of an ideas novel, in the sense that it’s in a way a complaint against the death penalty. This is best illustrated by the poem in the beginning of the book, which are the first four lines of the Ballade des pendus by François Villon, a poem about the horrible fate of people condemned to death.

Summary:

Part I: The Last to See Them Alive. The master of River Valley Farm in Holcomb, Kansas, was 48-year-old Herbert William Clutter, a self- made, prosperous farmer universally respected for his sterling character, farming skill and modesty. His wife Bonnie was a delicate woman who had for years been troubled by a nervous disorder. They had four (children. of whom two were still living at home. 6-year-old Nancy and her brother Kenyon who was one year younger. Nancy was the town darling, an intelligent, efficient kindly and thoroughly lovable girl. Kenyon, a lanky boy already taller than his father, was as intelligent as Nancy but more sensitive and less sociable.
It was Saturday, November 14, 1959. Two young men were driving to River Valley Farm in a black Chevrolet. Some time ago they had been cellmates at Kansas State Penitentiary. Perry Smith, the son of an Irish father and a Cherokee mother, both professional rodeo-riders was a romantically-minded dreamy neurotic haunted by the memories of his childhood, which he had spent in miserable circumstances among loveless people. His friend Dick Hickock came from a humble but respectable family. Dick, whose intelligence was above average, was filled with a burning desire for riches and sexual experience. He had twice married and twice divorced a girl of sixteen.
At Kansas State Penitentiary, Dick had struck up an acquaintance with a fellow-prisoner, Floyd Wells, who had worked at the Clutter farm for some time. When Floyd told Dick about Clutter's great wealth. Dick’s interest was immediately aroused and he started asking detailed questions. He was pleased to hear Floyd say that there was a safe in the Clutter home containing some ten thousand dollars in cash. Dick boasted that he was going to rob Clutter once he got out of jail, adding confidently that he "would leave no witnesses."
Part II: Persons Unknown. On Sunday, November 15, 1959, the four members of the Clutter family were found horribly murdered. The crime was apparently motiveless and all but clueless. Robbery seemed out of the question, for the murderers had got away with only forty or fifty dollars in cash and Nancy's portable radio. The police did all they could: a total of eighteen men we reassigned to the case full time, among them some of the ablest investigators of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation. But they made little progress, though they received hundreds of tips and followed up various clues that ended up nowhere.
Meanwhile Dick and Perry were quite close to the scene of the crime, making preparations in a Kansas hotel for a journey abroad. Because they had been disappointed in the amount of money the crime had yielded -there had been no safe -Dick passed dud cheques in shops to raise funds. On November 21, having loaded their car with luxury.
Here they had a good time living at the expense of a vacationing German lawyer. When the German went home and their money ran out, they sold their car and hitchhiked back to the United States.
Part 111: Answer. Though the detectives had unearthed some clues, they would probably never have discovered the identity of the murderers, if Floyd Wells had Dot read about the crime in a newspaper and decided to report to the authorities about his contact with Dick Hickock, thereby collecting a reward of one thousand dollars. From then on it was easy going for the police.
After their return from Mexico, Dick and Perry stole a car, passed false cheques again and spent the money on a holiday in Miami. From there they travelled to Perry's...








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