That "Holy Crap" moment for a reader...

Sometimes you pick up a book, start reading and think: "Holy crap, this guy can write."

And then you think, "I can really learn something from this writer."

And then, "I don't need to go back to work today, do I?"

That's how I felt today an lunch when I found a used copy of Truman Capote's 1965 docu-drama In Cold Blood in the sale bin at my local library.

I had heard a lot about this book, and about the Holcomb murders that spawned it, but had never been able to find a copy at a price I was willing to pay. So, when I found the Vintage International paperback version for just a buck, I didn't hesitate.

I started reading Chapter 1 on the short walk back to the office and that's when the "Holy crap" exclamation leapt to mind.

I walked right on past the building in which I work, found a park bench and permitted myself the five extra minutes necessary to finish reading that first chapter. Then, and only then, could I force myself back to work.

Capote spends this brief first chapter introducing his reader to the town of Holcomb and, instead of producing a boring recitation of facts and figures, he paints a picture so vivid you can almost taste the Kansas community. To borrow one of his own phrases, Capote's writing is "desert-clear" and rivetting, his diction perfect, his metaphors and similes inventive and satisfying, and his construction of the chapter to culminate in the introduction of the horrific crime that will be his focus ingenious.

The final paragraph of the chapter, a long, climbing passage from the introduction of the key date to the impact it would have on the sleeping town, is in itself a masterpiece of writing.

My favourite sentence n that final para begins at about the mid-point: "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."

Awesome. The casual insertion of a key detail ("a Sunday morning"), the purposed introduction of the first discordant word in the entire para ("foreign"), the word both connoting and identifying difference, the clever use of alliteration ("normal nightly Holcomb noises", "scrape of scuttling", "racing, receding") to remind us that Holcomb was a close-knit, closely-related community of like-minded people, all combine to create an astonishingly effective sentence in which every word works.

I expect In Cold Blood to be a rivetting read and I don't expect myself to be able to force myself to read it slowly enough the first time through to savour in detail the quality of Capote's writing. So that means multiple readings. And, if that first chapter is any indication, I will deeply enjoy every one of those readings.