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“‘This is it, this is it, this has to be it, there’s the school, there’s the garage, now we turn south.�� To Perry [Smith], it seemed as though Dick [Hickock] were mumbling jubilant mumbo-jumbo. They left the highway, sped through a deserted Holcomb, and crossed the Santa Fe tracks. ‘The bank, that must be the bank, now we turn west �� see the trees? This is it, this has to be it.�� The headlights disclosed a lane of Chinese elms; bundles of wind-blown thistle scurried across it. Dick doused the headlights, slowed down, and stopped until his eyes were adjusted to the moon-illuminated night. Presently, the car crept forward…��
- Truman Capote, In Cold Blood

American crime writing stretches all the way back to before the founding of the United States. If you want �� I don’t necessarily recommend it �� you can read Cotton Mather, and find him recounting the alleged criminal actions committed by his neighbors (some of which involves taking license with farm animals). Since then, there have been countless newspaper articles, magazine stories, and entire books aimed at fulfilling an insatiable appetite for understanding the felonious conduct of others. Despite the overwhelming number of entries in the true crime genre, however, you cannot have a conversation about it without mentioning one notorious book: Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood.

Billed by its creator as a new literary form, the “nonfiction novel,�� this product of the New Journalism was not actually a first of its kind. That does not lessen its impact, or its artistry.

In Cold Blood begins on the windswept plains of Kansas, outside the town of Holcomb (“The land is flat, and the views are extensive; horses, herds of cattle, a white cluster of grain elevators rising as gracefully as Greek temples…��), and ends in a cemetery underneath the same big sky (“the graves…lie in a far corner of the cemetery �� beyond the trees, out in the sun, almost at the wheat field’s bright edge...��). In terms of structure, pacing, dialogue, reveals, and fully-realized scenes, this reads as good as any fiction, and far better than most.

That’s the problem, though.

A lot of it is fiction.

***

The story behind the making of In Cold Blood, which was the subject of two major motion pictures, at times threatens to subsume the underlying subject matter, like a snake eating its own tail. According to legend, Capote, a famed author and bon vivant, saw a small article in The New York Times about the murder of Herbert, Bonnie, Kenyon, and Nancy Clutter, members of a relatively well-off farming family. With his authorial senses tingling �� nothing sells like murder in the heartland �� Capote set off for Kansas with his buddy Nell Harper Lee. Once there, this odd couple essentially embedded themselves into the community, pumping them for information until the well ran dry. Later, once two suspects �� Perry Smith and Richard Hickock �� were in custody, Capote insinuated himself into their lives as well.

When all was said and done, it became hard to know whether Capote was simply a fact finder, or an active participant, one whose unseen hand actually shaped the outcome of the case.

***

Even with all its baggage, it is startling how much talent is on display here. This is a book that grips you, and insists that you keep reading. The prose is luminous, the characterizations acute, and the setting marvelously realized. Capote finds his arc, and he builds carefully around that, modulating the tension until his big payoff, before settling on as graceful an ending as you can imagine. There are moments of subdued ghastliness, such as Perry Smith’s confession:

[Alvin] Dewey’s ears ring with it �� a ringing that almost deafens him to the whispery rush of Smith’s soft voice. But the voice plunges on, ejecting a fusillade of sounds and images: Hickock hunting the discharged shell; hurrying, hurrying, and Kenyon’s head in a circle of light, the murmur of muffled pleadings, then Hickock again scrambling after a used cartridge; Nancy’s room, Nancy listening to boots on hardwood stairs, the creak of the steps as they climb toward her, Nancy’s eyes, Nancy watching the flashlight’s shine seek the target (“She said, ‘Oh, no! Oh, please. No! No! No! No! Don’t! Oh, please don’t! Please!�� I gave the gun to Dick. I told him I’d done all I could do. He took aim, and she turned her face to the wall��); the dark hall, the assassins hastening toward the final door. Perhaps, having heard all she had, Bonnie welcomed their swift approach.

There are also moments when Capote describes a place �� a cheap hotel room in Mexico, or the gallows in Kansas �� with such tactility that you can almost reach out and touch it. In Cold Blood lives so strongly in the memory because it indelibly implants these images into your head, as well as any movie.

Towering over everything is Capote’s portrait of Perry Smith. In Cold Blood is not a whodunit. Rather, in large part, it is the character study of a killer. A cripple suffering from chronic pain in both legs �� which had been crushed in a motorcycle accident �� Smith grew up with an alcoholic mother who died when he was very young. He spent time in several orphanages, where he claimed to have been abused. In Capote’s compassionate hands, this victim-turned-victimizer becomes a tragically tortured figure, one so skillfully etched that his ultimately homicidal acts feel like an inevitability.

Of course, part of the problem with In Cold Blood is this very thing. By lifting up Perry Smith, Capote casts a shadow over everyone else: his partner in crime, Hickock; the law enforcement agents who caught him; and most of all, the victims themselves.

Still, if overemphasizing the killer was In Cold Blood’s only problem, it could be dismissed as a common failing of the true crime genre. After all, many (if not most) of these types of stories focus more on the criminal than the victim. Unfortunately, this is a dramatic imperative, since the criminal is the agent of action, while the victim is the passive recipient.

As noted above, however, this is not the only issue with In Cold Blood.

***


From the moment of its publication, In Cold Blood was trailed by accusations: Capote made up dialogue; Capote invented things; Capote was wrong with his interpretations.

Some of these criticisms are off base, as they involve judgment calls or sour grapes. Obviously, people who came off looking bad cried foul, but that doesn’t mean that Capote was wrong. Other criticisms, though, are right on point. The creation of scenes whole cloth, for instance, particularly rankles. For example, the book’s ending �� providing a beautiful counterpoint to the opening �� is so perfect that it feels fortuitous. According to one of the men involved, it was too perfect, because it never happened.

Perhaps more troubling is Capote’s absence in this story. Told objectively in the third-person �� except for long portions of purportedly verbatim recollections from various participants �� Capote does not place himself into events.

On the one hand, this was nice. There is a trend in modern true crime for an author to insert him or herself into the chronicle, making their personal story equal to that being presented. This can work, if done right, such as in Michelle McNamara’s posthumously released I’ll Be Gone in the Dark. But it’s hard to do right. In my opinion, many efforts suffer from this intrusion, which can be annoyingly distracting, or used as filler to supplement otherwise meager facts. In Cold Blood is blessedly free of self-conscious handwringing about the ethics of crime-writing. There are no digressions into areas about which a reader could not care less. For all of Capote's legendary ego, there is no reflective navel-gazing. Above all else, there is the thrilling sense of watching things unfold as a witness.

Yet Capote’s absence can be seen as an act of mendacity. According to some sources, he was pulling strings and moving pieces in order to shape the outcome. The extent of this can be debated. Nevertheless, I think it’s fair to say that In Cold Blood without Capote as a character cannot �� for this reason alone �� be considered the full story.

In the end, the controversy cannot do much to knock In Cold Blood off its pedestal. While it may not be a great work of investigative journalism, it is undoubtedly a powerful piece of art.