As with many seminal works that pioneered a genre, this book is... fine. Capote was one of the first to write a non-fiction novelization of "true crime" events, and the genre is now well-established and unremarkable, but this book was the original "Serial."

Capote extensively interviewed people who knew the family and the murderers, and much of the story does have an unsensational ring of truth. The murderers aren't the classic waxed-mustache villains with a dastardly smile; they're not insane perverts in the modern trope: they're amoral, asocial men of the type which humanity has always had among us, and is labeling now as "incels," who have a palpable feeling of their own superiority and believe society owes them.

One of the most striking parts of this book to me were the statistics on incarceration by race. "The present warden, Sherman H. Crouse, keeps a chart which lists the daily total according to race (for example, White 1405, Colored 360, mexicans 12, Indians 6)." page 559. According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons' website as of Sat, 15 Feb 2020, of the 173k federal inmates in their custody, 37.5% are Black. If we were to take both figures as representative of both time periods, then over 60 years Black inmates have increased by 86%!

Capote comments on the time it takes for someone to go through the justice system, from conviction to paying the ultimate price, criticizing how easy it is to prolong the appeals process. It's an easy target, but Capote doesn't explicitly condemn capital punishment or suggest a better process. Something to chew on, as the justice system has only gotten worse given time and inattention.