The Who (Not the Band)

*A bit of a disclaimer is needed here. I meant to have this posted last week, but there was a bit of confusion and it did not and I'm posting this now because Professor Smith said that she wanted me to. So the information and details here in this post is going to be a bit old. Sorry for the confusion.*

I guess you guys can already tell that this book is about the murders of the Clutter family members based on reading the rest of my group members’ posts. Herbert Clutter, his wife, and two of their kids were shot pointblank and there were few clues left behind. In fear of spoiling the ending I won’t say who the murderers are. That’s the downside of looking up background information on the internet, right there.

            What I can give you is a reason as to why Truman Capote started writing this book. He heard about the four murders of the Capote family and he decided to travel to Kansas to write about the crime. At the time, no one knew who the murderer was. They, like everyone else were left in just as much mystery. Capote and his fellow author and friend, Nelle Harper Lee, talked to residents and investigators alike reporting on the crime.

The murderers were arrested six weeks after the murders and Capote spent six years working on the book. It became the one of the first works in the “true crime” genre. What is unique about this novel is that Capote looked at both the lives of the two parolees who committed the murders, the lives of the victims and the effect this had on their community. This is what makes this novel so unique from the rest and what helped it to pave the path for other non-fiction novels.