In Cold Blood Review | Teen Ink

In Cold Blood Review

April 28, 2023
By fill2425 PLATINUM, Hartland, Wisconsin
fill2425 PLATINUM, Hartland, Wisconsin
21 articles 0 photos 0 comments

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote expresses a 1959 Murder of 4 members of the Clutter family, which is based on a true story. A mysterious novel on how the nicest family in Holcomb, Kansas was viciously murdered. Capote goes into deep detail on what happened and why it was committed. As you go through, get to learn more about the characters and how they develop the story throughout the rest of the book. 

During the beginning of the book it doesn’t go straight to the murder, instead it goes to before the murder. It tells us the lives of the other people before the murder, including the Clutter family. The Author made it seem like nothing was going on with the Clutters as if they were always innocent. They lived the perfect life, living what they called the American Dream. Moving out from a smaller village near the edge of Kansas, to know Holcomb, Mr Clutter gets to raise his family in peace and quiet but then everything goes unexpectedly wrong. The novel created two different stories throughout the book. For every couple of pages it would switch to another character in a completely different place, almost like leaving the main piece of the novel. One of the sides was dealing with the Murdering in Holcomb, Kansas while the other character was leaving Holcomb, Kansas to create a new life. Well, how does this tie with each other, well you will have to read the book to figure out why this was created and what happened with the murdering. 

Even though the book may seem very interesting or exciting, the book takes way too long to build up suspense. It talks about the characters' lives before the murder, and how everyone acted. Knowing that It is a murdering book, wouldn’t you expect it to be building up the murdering and then explaining what happened? Welp no, it doesn’t, you have to read half of the book until you feel the suspense of the novel.  The background information seems very unnecessary, it talks right away about the murdering but instead it has a long build up to the murder. Most of the characters that are stated in the beginning of the book, don’t play a big role in the future of the book. It seemed like a filler to almost build up suspense but didn’t achieve it in an efficient way. As more characters get added, it makes keeping track of everyone very hard. It feels very annoying especially when a new character is introduced and you learn all this stuff about them and then they never get mentioned during the rest of the book. 

Overall the book takes very long to get to the point and actually explain the novel. If you're someone who enjoys the long build up then you should enjoy the book, but if you don’t like long build ups and more suspenseful books I would not recommend the book. 



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