#50 in Classics
In Cold Blood
- 352
- Pages
- about 6 h
- Reading time
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Our view
“In Cold Blood” reconstructs the murder of a Kansas farming family with a novelist’s control: the town, the investigators and the two killers each get their turn, and the book’s unsettling achievement is to make all of them human. Knowing the outcome from the start takes nothing away from the tension. The detail of the crime is grim, and the sympathy it extends to the murderers leaves readers with hard questions rather than comfort.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
In Cold Blood is a non-fiction novel by the American author Truman Capote, first published in 1966. It details the 1959 Clutter family murders in the small farming community of Holcomb, Kansas, who were murdered by home intruders during a failed home invasion.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 8.2 across 1,053 ratings. With that many, the reader vote carries 88% of the weight and the score stays at 8.1 — the Classics average of 7.7 barely moves it.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 8.1 | 98 | 9% |
| Hardcover | 8.2 | 955 | 91% |
Frequently asked
How long is In Cold Blood?
It has 352 pages — longer than 75% of the ranked books in Classics.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
The same shelf — Classics — and a score of 8.1, the closest to this book.
