In Cold Blood tells the true story of the murder of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas in November 1959, the dangerousness of the two perpetrators, and the ensuing manhunt by law enforcement. The two perpetrators, Richard “Dick” Hickock and Perry Smith, learned from another prison inmate that the Clutter family was wealthy and allegedly had a safe in their house. Their goal was to rob the family without leaving any witnesses behind and use their loot to live a better life in Mexico. The four family members, Mr. and Mrs. Clutter as well as their teenage children Nancy and Kenyon, were killed through shotgun blasts to the head, rendering the crime particularly brutal. Law enforcement was left searching in the dark because there were no viable clues.

The author of In Cold Blood is Truman Capote. Capote was an American novelist who was most famously known for the novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Besides writing fictional novels, Capote also wrote non-fictional pieces such as profiles and reportages for The New Yorker.  Despite claiming to have collected 8000 pages of notes, Capote didn’t record a single conversation so he wouldn’t “artificialize the atmosphere.” He later said in an interview with the New York Times in 1966 that he had trained himself for several years to transcribe conversations without using tape recorders and could transcribe interviews with 90% accuracy.

Explaining why he was writing the book to one of the murderers (Smith), Capote said in the NYT interview “I had a strictly aesthetic theory about creating a book which could result in a work of art.” In his opinion, reporting could be done as artistically and interestingly as fiction. The way to accomplish that in his eyes, was by combining fictional creative writing techniques with non-fictional reporting in a “new art form” – the non-fiction novel. Before ever learning about the Holcomb murders, Capote had long been looking for the right topic to write a non-fictional novel about. He hadn’t considered crime to be a good topic, when news about the murders went around the US and presented as the perfect opportunity. Murder, Capote thought, was a theme that was perfect for his “art” because it would not “darken and yellow” over the years.

Truman Capote started his research for the book after arriving in Holcomb on December 15, 1959 – exactly a month after the murders had taken place. He was accompanied by his friend Harper Lee, author of the book To Kill a Mockingbird. Even though he later dismissed Lee’s contribution to In Cold Blood as keeping him company, interviewees such as Bob Rupp later said that the interviews were mainly conducted by Lee because Capote wasn’t all that friendly and easy to talk to. Either way, as mentioned above, Capote didn’t record the interviews but transcribed them word for word from his memory so that the conversations would happen less artificially. Most of the interviews were conducted after the murderers had been caught and after Holcomb had calmed down. He did not only talk to relatives of the Clutter family and the people of Holcomb in different instances over several years, but he also interviewed the two offenders and some of the people they met along their way to and back from Mexico. Capote’s research went on for 6 years and he collected several thousands of pages of notes.

For research purposes, Capote went and visited all of the places and hotels him and Smith stayed in after fleeing and returning to the US. He had obtained the names of the places from Hickock who remembered them in great detail.

The part that was most important to accomplishing Capote’s theory of a non-fiction novel was getting the necessary amount of detail and background information to illustrate and complete the story and its characters. Even more creative pieces of journalism, profiles and features, most often require the writer to only establish one or two characters in full detail. For a full non-fiction novel, it was essential to develop a story around the murders that was intricate, complete, and real at the same time. To achieve that, In Cold Blood starts out with the establishment of the main characters and their lives, the people who they associate with, and the things they did in their final day. Then, Capote begins introducing Smith and Hickock and builds their characters. Later, the characters of the investigators are added as well as the people Hickock and Smith met and sometimes planned to murder while traveling.

Capote did not include himself in the story and also left out his own opinion. As in any novel there is a lot of description of and detail about the characters, scenes, and buildings. Capote made the active choice to use certain adjectives to describe things which can be argued to be subjective. However, Capote also observed a lot of the detail himself, such as how the people he interviewed looked and behaved. Therefore, it can be argued that him describing things a certain way does not mean that he included his opinion or made anything up.

Capote was definitely somewhat emotionally involved in the story. He spent 6 years researching and collecting all of the gruesome details of the crime for a project he thought of as his artwork. The book is not just a factual news story to inform people of what really happened but a novel that is designed to draw people in through emotion. Furthermore, Capote said himself in the interview that if he knew what the future held, he would have never stopped in Holcomb but continued to drive which is the strongest sign for emotional involvement.

My reactions to the book were mixed. First, it is written in such detail that I sometimes found myself forgetting what the book was actually about. Secondly, there were so many characters involved that it was impossible to remember all of them when they were brought up again later in the book. On the other hand, it was really fascinating to me how Capote took all of the information he received and spun it into one comprehensive and very readable story. Keeping up with all the people and remembering important pieces of notes years after getting them must have been difficult.

While I think the detail that he managed to write into this story is amazing, I also took it with a grain of salt. I don’t think that all of the quotes and dialogues are accurate, not just because he transcribed them from memory, but also because it’s unrealistic that the witnesses of the conversations who told him what the victims said on their final day remembered everything word for word. Human memory just doesn’t work that way especially not if there have been months or years in between the event and the recalling of it. I also think that his background as a novelist would have led him to want to establish characters a certain way to make them fit into the story. Consciously or not, I think he may have therefore distorted some of the characters and their stories.

Overall, the whole book and what it represents reminds me of true crime documentaries today. They also use a lot of detail and different people involved to reconstruct the crimes. Because people are so obsessed with them today, I’m not surprised that In Cold Blood became a big thing.