Hurrah for the Brunswick Book Club who once again have forced me to read a work that I would normally shun. Crime novels are amongst my least favourite books probably because the structure seems too linear and obvious and characters are often stereotyped. Sort of like the musical equivalent of reggae. Note how I didn’t say ska because at least ska offers upbeat fun, something crime books (-well the ones I’ve read) don’t have much of. Kim would differ on this citing Elmore Leonard, Janet Evanovich and co. I’m sure. But, I’ve got things slightly wrong – this one was a real-life crime book, so I was into new territory. These ones are scary!
It seems Capote is the flavour of the month recently due to the award winning film about him, and so plenty of folks have been telling me that this is the book he took 10 years to write and research. It convincingly describes a conservative 1950’s small town and its values, and contains authentic recollections and facts, which toward the second half starts to feel like overkill. I really don’t want to read for the fourth time about the family background and psyche’s of the murdering duo. There’s some gratuitous stuff near the end about fellow death-row inmates and their stories, which seemed odd, and I thought it cheapened a very good book. The writing was delightfully crisp and impartial; the back and forward chapters about the Clutter family (pre-crime) and the two bad guys approaching them was magnificent in building tension and suspense. At a certain point I was feeling nervous about reading THE CHAPTER WITH ALL THE KILLING IN IT, as it seemed like stuff to give you nightmares, but thankfully that was dealt with by Capote in a sparse unemotional way – much like how the killers later described it actually. I had been just about to recommend that Kim perhaps give it a miss. For me, a wonderful part of the book was the unsentimental contrast between the hardworking, puritan values and innocence of the average Kansas native, and the reckless, amorality of the killers. Even so, it seemed a time when once caught, bad guys confessed all, lest they be condemned to a worse fate in the afterlife. I thought it was a terrific book, that could have been 50 pages shorter. 4.5 stars.