(A Little More Than) Half Way There! ~ In Cold Blood

So I'm a little more than halfway through In Cold Blood now, and too be honest, I'm not totally impressed. It's an extremely interesting story, don't get me wrong, but it's a very flat line. There's not a lot of things that are like, "Oh, I bet you didn't see that coming!", but I think that probably has a lot to do with the fact that it's a true story. I keep waiting for a point in the story where I'm totally astonished and caught off guard.

Okay, sorry, I forgot to fill you in on the story. So apparently, I was completely reading the back of the book wrong when writing my last post. For some reason, I had it in my head that the father killed the family, when really it was (*spoiler alert*) complete strangers and the dad one of the four that was murdered. The story is told in semi-chronological order starting a few days before the murder and leading up to the trial. What I've really been enjoying about the book is that it's told in several perspectives. It's not just like, "This is what happened, this is what happened next." The story goes back and forth between several perspectives of the story. For example, it starts off with what the family was during the day before they were murdered that night. It then turns over to what the murderers were doing that day and also a couple days and weeks back. As I've said in previous posts, I really enjoy when books are told from more than one point of view, and I do think that the way this story is being told helps to distract from the lack of surprises.

It's a pretty straightforward story. It's easy to infer from the beginning that Perry and Dick were the ones that killed the Clutter family, even though the author didn't directly disclose that until almost halfway through the book. You know that the family dies and that the murderers are on the run. It's easy to guess that they're going to get caught and sent to jail or given the death penalty. From very early in the book, it's not hard to guess how the book is going to end.

There's one quote in the story that I find to be very reflective upon the town right after the murder takes place. It goes as follows: "This hitherto peaceful congregation of neighbors and old friends had suddenly to endure the unique experience of distrusting each other; understandably, they believed that the murderer was among themselves." What I like about this quote is that it shows that even in the tightest knit communities, something like this breaks the most unbreakable people. Because the town at first believes that the murderers were people the family and community know, they immediately lose all sense of security they have with each other. They begin to lock doors that had never before become locked and lose trust in the people they'd known their whole lives. This one terrible event caused even the securist of people to become confused and distrusting about who the people around them really were, and hence, they lost all senses of safety and honesty.


At this point, I'm still hoping that there will be a point in the story where I'm caught off guard and something unexpected happens, though I find that to be very unlikely. Other than that, I'm enjoying the book very much and would definitely recommend it. I'll let you know soon how things turn out!

-Jenna