Deliberate Cruelty: Truman Capote, The Millionaire's Wife, and the Murder of the Century

By Roseanne Montillo

Adult Non-Fiction

Reviewed by Linda from the Winkler Branch

    Late one night, after a party where everyone had been talking about a thief prowling the neighborhood, Ann Woodward accidentally shot and killed her millionaire husband Billy.  Or was it accidental?  The court of popular opinion called it murder, and writer Truman Capote made it his mission, or vendetta, to make Ann pay for it, for his own secret reasons.  Capote and Ann Woodward came from the same kind of background, but instead of finding common ground, Capote ended up driving Woodward to her death.

    I was expecting Deliberate Cruelty to be true crime, and in a way it is.  The first half of the book is all about the shooting, the background of the main characters, and the investigation and court case.  (Personally, I would have liked more emphasis on the investigation and trial).  But then Montillo switches to Truman Capote and his fascination with the story of Ann Woodward, and goes into his background and life with the same thoroughness that she gave Woodward. Her argument is that whether or not Woodward killed her husband, Truman Capote drove her to suicide, essentially murdering her.  Montillo develops her story slowly, and to me it read more like social commentary than true crime, so that was a bit of a disappointment.  Still, it was a good read, and I don't regret picking it up.

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