Fascinating and Flawed: In Cold Blood Review

The slaying of four members of the Clutter family of Holcomb, Kansas in November 1959 and the subsequent investigation and trial attracted the attention of author Truman Capote. He painstakingly researched the case and conducted dozens of interviews. In the process Capote nearly created a new genre of literature, the non-fiction novel, in which a true story is told using the techniques of fiction writing. In Cold Blood: A True Account of a Multiple Murder and its Consequences is the result of Capote’s efforts.

From the outset, the reader knows of the Clutters’ murders as well as the capture, conviction, and execution of the killers, Perry Smith and Dick Hickock. Early on, Capote introduces the readers to Herbert Clutter, a wealthy and well-respected farmer in Kansas, and his family. Capote quickly sketches a biography of each of the victims: Herb, his wife Bonnie, and their two teenage children, Nancy and Kenyon. Herb and Bonnie had two older children, Eveanna and Beverly, who lived out of the house, and thus were not targeted in the murder. Capote builds tension by keeping two questions in front of the reader. First, what really occurred in the Clutter’s house during the morning of the homicides? And second, given the seeming randomness of the murders and the distinct lack of clues or motive, how were Smith and Hickock were ever captured or convicted?

Capote’s success at blending genres has mixed results. As a piece of non-fiction, the book is fascinating. Few writers of non-fiction could stage a scene as full of suspense as Capote does when he describes how the Clutters’ friends discover their murder. The scope of Captoe’s gaze is staggering as we follow the killers, neighbors, investigators, people the investigators questioned, attorneys, and reporters across the borders of several states and countries. Capote, however, does not simply report the facts of the events; he gives time to the emotional and psychological effects of the murders as well. The fear of the Holcomb citizens is clearly palpable in the aftermath of the killings. The Clutters’ deaths introduces suspicion and distrust between neighbors, as well as questions regarding life’s meaning in the face of random violence. As Bess Hartman, a citizen of Holcomb says, “One old man sitting here that Sunday, he put his finger right on it, the reason nobody can sleep; he said, ‘All we’ve got out here are our friends. There isn’t anything else.’” (70)

When compared to other novels, however, In Cold Blood is not as successful. Whereas hearing from the myriad voices adds to a scenic richness, it detracts from character development. Of all the people we meet, the ones whom we really get to know, Smith and Hickock, are in many ways, the flattest characters. We wonder what was in their psyches that led to such atrocities, but we do not receive much of an answer. The more we look into their lives, the more cavernous and empty they seem. That is an interesting observation about the nature of these men, but they are difficult to relate to. I wish we spent more time seeing the town of Holcomb recover, or followed Alvin Dewey, the chief investigator and the effects the manhunt has on him. We catch glimpses of the weight Dewey and his brilliant partners in the Kansas Bureau of Investigation feel, and yet, these men and their families could have been developed more. Near its end, the book loses steam as the main questions Capote teases us with have been answered and we simply watch the killers languish in various cells, awaiting their fates.

One cannot deny Capote’s mastery of the English language, though at times, he is perhaps too masterful for his own good. He often ventures into overwriting. The first section of the book suffers the most from an overwrought style as he tries to quickly give three-dimensional pictures of the Clutters before they die. This description of Bonnie’s lingering psychological problems is just one example of Capote trying a bit too hard:

Between the births of Beverly and Nancy, three more years elapsed, and these were the years of the Sunday picnics and of summer excursions to Colorado, the years when she really ran her own home and was the happy center of it. But with Nancy and then with Kenyon, the pattern of postnatal depression repeated itself, and following the birth of her son, the mood of misery that descended never altogether lifted; it lingered like a cloud that might rain or might not. (27)

As the story progresses, Capote does not lay it on as thick, or maybe, the reader simply acclimates to his style. Either way, In Cold Blood becomes more readable after the first eighty pages, once Capote turns his attention to answering the two questions above.

In their trial, both Smith and Hickock plead temporary insanity and Capote takes the opportunity to explore what that term may mean. According to the M’Naghten Rule, one can only be declared criminally insane if they are unaware of their action and do not know that the crime they commit is wrong. As we meet the other residents of death row at Lansing, we see a common thread between all the murderers, including Smith and Hickock: namely, a complete disregard for human life. Each man knows that society says it is wrong to kill another person, but they simply do not care. Capote insinuates that this lack of compassion for others is itself a type of insanity.

In Cold Blood does not fully address the debate over capital punishment, but it does not avoid it either. Some Holcomb pastors preach against it and other people, such as Dewey, believe that the death penalty is a necessary deterrent against murder. As one who is against the death penalty, I understand that my position defends the lives of people who have committed some of the worst actions we can imagine. Reading of the evil deeds of Smith and Hickock and their lack of real remorse sends chills down my spine. As Capote describes the actions and attitudes of those condemned to die, one sees that none of the killers on death row in Lansing ever considered not committing their crimes because they might be executed. One wonders if these men could have been persuaded or stopped by any law, or if containment was the only reasonable alternative. Containment not as a deterrent, but as a means of protecting others from men like them. Perhaps Ed Tom Bell, the sheriff from Cormac McCarthy’s novel, No Country for Old Men sheds the greatest insight on this matter when he says, “It takes very little to govern good people. Very little. And bad people cant be governed at all. Or if they could I never heard of it.”