In Cold Blood – Capote Helter Skelter – Bugliosi Which is the Definitive True Crime Book?
In Cold Blood – Capote
Helter Skelter – Bugliosi
Which is the Definitive True Crime Book?
49 Answers
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I have just started reading this book, In cold blood
Which book? In cold blood… or Helter Skelter?
In cold blood
In Cold Blood, in my opinion.
Of course it’s all opinion based just interested to see if people prefer one over the other
In Cold Blood is literature, Helter Skelter is a really great true crime book. Both well worth reading.
In Cold Blood!
I’m just reading Helter Skelter now (1/2 way through in 1 day!) It is a very different book to In Cold Blood – I agree with Karen Schauer about In True Blood being literature. Both really readable though!
Ditto ^ – In Cold Blood!
In Cold Blood is a more literary true crime book. Heater Skelter- excellent true crime
Some would argue that Mailer’s Executioner’s Song about Gary Gilmore is the definitive true crime book.
In Cold Blood
In Cold Blood
Helter skelter!
Killing For Company by Brian Masters and Beyond Belief (author escapes me, apologies) are worth tracking down.
In Cold Blood but Helter Skelter is brilliant.
HS, in my opinion
In Cold Blood
I’d say In Cold Blood for the writing, but Helter Skelter is pretty amazing.
Good question! The advantage of Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi is that it’s written by a man who was actually in the investigation rather than a man who researched it.
John Douglas books are the true crime books
In Cold Blood but Helter Skelter is sooo good too!
In Cold Blood
Both are fantastic!
That’s a hard one, but I will go with helter skelter, I like his writing better.
In Cold Blood!
I loved them both!
“But then, in the earliest hours of that morning in November, a Sunday morning, certain foreign sounds impinged on the normal nightly Holcomb noises—on the keening hysteria of coyotes, the dry scrape of scuttling tumbleweed, the racing, receding wail of locomotive whistles. At the time not a soul in sleeping Holcomb heard them—four shotgun blasts that, all told, ended six human lives. But afterward the townspeople, theretofore sufficiently unfearful of each other to seldom trouble to lock their doors, found fantasy re-creating them over and again—those somber explosions that stimulated fires of mistrust in the glare of which many old neighbors viewed each other strangely, and as strangers.”
I went to college with a girl from Holcomb who knew the family and remembers it all….so sad
Cold blood.
It still creeps me out today. It is so detailed, and Capote was cruel to both the assassins and the families of the victims – all to get as much information as possible.
But nonetheless, amazing book.
But creepy!
In Cold Blood
In cold blood. Am a huge manson fan but theres more to his story than vinces
Fatal vision by Joel mcguinnes is excellent too
I still think about The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer. It won the Pulitzer Prize. More true crime literature.
OMG! What an impossible question. When I read the excerpt put up by @Tony, I remember the writing of Truman Capote. Beautiful, descriptive, like poetry about an impossibly difficult subject. My vote is for In Cold Blood. (I loved Helter Skelter too)
Neither, The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer.
The Onion Field – Joseph Wambaugh
Helter Skelter seemed the most like a police report/book to me. Capote did powerful book about a sad, sad happening.
All I can say is that both of these books scared the hell out of me when I read them years ago!
In cold blood scary scary
In Cold Blood
I’m reading In Cold Blood right now
I would say In Cold Blood
Robert Graysmith’s – Zodiac to me is better than both.
Kay Scarpetta series.
In Cold Blood — of course.
In Cold Blood and many, many more
In Cold Blood was the first non-fiction fiction of its genre. If you want actual non-fiction, you have to go with Helter Skelter.
In Cold Blood. Hands down; it changed American literature and influenced writers that followed. First true crime book written as a story, like reading a fiction novel. Only it was gruesomely true, and so powerful.