Cold Blood

I want to say it made my blood run cold. But the book is called In Cold Blood, so saying that my blood is cold makes me sound like a sociopath. I can think of two situations in which we speak of cold blood in humans. (More may exist that I’m not thinking of at the moment.) We talk of a person who murders when not in a rage as a cold-blooded killer. And we say when we encounter something horrific or uncanny that it makes our blood run cold. So here's what I actually mean: Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood made my blood run cold in the best way.

OK, see? “In the best way.” That makes me sound like I enjoy murder. I don’t! Like Hercules Poirot, “I do not approve of murder.” But don’t we all like reading about it?

Sometime in the last couple of years, my wife and I saw a movie or TV show in which the character Truman Capote appears once or twice, telling dinner companions that he is writing not just a new book but a new kind of book. Neither of us can remember what that show was. If any of my readers recognize it, please remind me! (Note: he appears once or twice. I’m not talking about the Philip Seymour Hoffman film.)

In any case, with or without that source identified, I know that Capote thought this about his book. And now I understand what he meant by a new kind of book: it is a nonfiction book written as a novel. His beautiful prose descriptions of Holcomb, Kansas, raise a crystal-clear picture of the town to my mind’s eye. His presentation of the killers Hickock and Smith, based on extensive interviews, depicts the surprisingly numerous layers of their terrifying personalities in tragic detail. He recounts the story of KBI agents combing through evidence and tracking down the solution to the crime with all the suspense of Hitchcock. But the masterstroke is the way Capote portrays the victims, the members of the Clutter family, never of course known to him while alive. Yet the novel-style narration, based on interviews with everyone in Holcomb, makes it seem as if he did know them. I want to say he brought the characters to life, but of course that is exactly what he couldn’t do. I can say, though, that he honored them by making them stand up from the page in three-dimensional solidity with all their charm, all their morality, all their intelligence and beauty and strength and athleticism, all their ambitions, all their quirks, all their shortcomings, and all their foibles. Amazing.

I’d waited a long time for this one, and it exceeded expectations.