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Masterplots, Fourth Edition

In Cold Blood

by Bernard E. Morris

First published: 1966

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Detective and mystery

Time of plot: 1959

Locale: Kansas

The Story:

Near the western border of Kansas, among wheat fields and dusty roads, lies Holcomb, a small community of farmers and ranchers. On the morning of November 14, 1959, Herb Clutter strolls across the grounds of River Valley Farm, heading toward a grove of trees that he nursed to life with the same care and purpose that he used to raise four children and build one of the largest, most prosperous spreads in Finney County. An educated, widely respected wheat farmer, Herb Clutter has little to worry about that Saturday morning. A lingering illness left his wife, Bonnie, partially disabled, but recent medical tests encourage the family to think that her medical problem is improving. Daughter Nancy, sixteen years old, the town sweetheart, helps with the household chores. She and her brother, Kenyon, fifteen years old, are outstanding students in the local high school. Two older daughters live out of town.

On that same morning, nearly four hundred miles east, in Olathe, Kansas, Perry Smith sits in a café waiting for his friend, Dick Hickock. They plan to drive to Holcomb, rob Clutter, kill everyone in the house, and flee to Mexico, where they hope to buy a boat and hunt for undersea treasure. Recently paroled from Kansas State Penitentiary and ordered to stay out of the state, Perry is persuaded to return to Kansas when Dick, also paroled, writes him of his plan to rob Clutter. According to Dick’s last cellmate, a former hired hand of Clutter, the farmer keeps as much as ten thousand dollars in his house.

Arriving at the Clutter farm near midnight, Perry and Dick enter through an unlocked door, awaken the victims, tie them up, and put them in separate rooms in the house. The killers find no wall safe stuffed with thousands of dollars; instead, they find Clutter’s wallet, containing about forty dollars. Still determined to leave no witnesses, the killers cut Clutter’s throat, then shoot him in the head at close range with a shotgun; the other three victims are shot, one by one, in similar fashion.

When the bodies are discovered the next morning, neighbors, friends, and relatives are electrified by the shocking crime. Alvin Dewey and his team of three investigators from the Kansas Bureau of Investigation in nearby Garden City interview anyone remotely connected to the Clutters or to River Valley Farm. Nothing develops from these efforts, not even a firm theory as to whether the Clutters were killed by one person or by two, and none of the investigators is sure why the four were killed. Robbery is a possible motive, but the few clues left by the killers confirm none of these theories.

Back in Olathe, Perry and Dick continue with their plans to go to Mexico, despite their failure in Holcomb. On November 21, Dick begins passing bad checks to finance their Mexican venture. Mexico, however, proves grimly disappointing. After a week in Mexico City and a trip to Acapulco, they use up most of their money, and the pawned merchandise is all but gone as well. A wealthy German finances a few days on a fishing boat, but plans of diving for treasure are scuttled by the obvious: Neither man takes well to water, and money is as elusive as the buried treasure of Perry’s dream. Back in Mexico City, their car sold and their finances rapidly dwindling, they decide to return to the United States. A bus takes them to Barstow, California, where they set about hitchhiking toward Kansas, harboring a plan to rob and kill a motorist. That plan is foiled when the prospective victim, a salesman who gave them a ride, stops for another hitchhiker.

Dewey’s investigation takes an upward turn when Hickock’s former prison cellmate tells the warden of Hickock’s plan to rob and kill the Clutters. That lead proves promising. The agents begin hunting Smith and Hickock, but the killers elude capture as they drive through Kansas in a stolen car. They pass bad checks to finance a trip to Miami, where they spend Christmas. Once again without money, they turn toward home, redeeming empty bottles found along the highway. Their journey ends in Las Vegas with their arrest in front of the post office; they stopped to pick up the package containing the boots worn during the Clutter murders. Perry mailed the package from Mexico. Dewey and his team hurry to Las Vegas, where, under the pressure of interrogation, Dick confesses to the crime. On the car ride back to Garden City, Perry recounts the details of the crime in full.

Housed in the county jail, the pair spends three months awaiting trial. The prosecution has a strong case, based on the murder weapons, the boots worn by the killers during the murders, the testimony of Dick’s former cellmate, and the killers’ confessions. The defense attorneys have no case. A psychiatric examination fails to justify a plea of insanity, and a few character witnesses do not sway the jury in favor of the two defendants. Both are convicted of all four murders and sentenced to hang.

Sent to the state penitentiary in Lansing in April, 1960, Perry and Dick spend the next five years on Death Row. Through a narrow window they can see across an empty lot the door that leads to the gallows. Three execution dates come and go, and when their last appeal is denied, they are hanged on April 14, 1965.

Critical Evaluation:

Although not the first writer to use actual events as a basis for a novel—Theodore Dreiser based the plot of An American Tragedy (1925) on an actual murder case, for example—Truman Capote treats actual events in In Cold Blood in undisguised documentary style. He was first to tout such a work a “nonfiction novel,” calling attention to the relationship between real-life events and the literary techniques used to convey them. Chief among the techniques is the arrangement of events in an order that contrasts the Clutter world with the world of their killers. Capote emphasizes the contrast between these different worlds by alternating between the two, giving the reader scenes and dialogue in a brief section (or session), then shifting to the other world.

The novel’s mystery is not who committed the murders, for with the introduction of Perry Smith and Dick Hickock, the reader knows who the killers are and whom they kill. The mystery is reflected, instead, in the inability of anyone, including the team of investigators, to discover the identity and motive of the murderers. One of Capote’s impressive achievements is to sustain the reader’s interest in the events, although the crime, its victims, and its perpetrators are known from the very beginning. Capote does so by continuing to contrast the world of Dick and Perry with that of the Clutters, implying by doing so that in an orderly universe these two realms would not intertwine. Harmony between humanity and nature, reflected in the autumn setting at the beginning of the book, is disrupted by the murders. The community is perplexed and frightened; its sense of order is shaken by the inexplicable nature of the crime.

Another of Capote’s achievements is to maintain a degree of independence from the material as he lays it before the reader, thereby creating the illusion of the omniscient narrator. Critics noted that Capote is more interested in Perry than in Dick. Perry’s interior life is given much more attention. Readers learn of Perry’s fantasies of being “Perry O’Parsons,” a singer in the limelight at a Las Vegas showplace. Readers are told of his dreams in which he is swallowed by a huge snake, rescued at the last moment by a big yellow bird, a Christ figure, that wafts him to heaven. His “artistic” and “sensitive” side is showcased in letters from a prison friend, and Capote gives extensive attention to the years of Perry’s troubled childhood and youth, including his difficulties with his father and the motorcycle accident that left him with crippled legs. By comparison, Dick’s character and background are given scant attention, amounting to little more than his passion for “blond chicken” and his conviction that he is “a normal.”

This apparent imbalance in characterization is part of Capote’s thematic control of his material, however, because Perry is the one who cuts Herb Clutter’s throat and shoots each member of the family. Focusing on Perry’s fantasy world and his background addresses the mystery at the heart of the novel: how four members of a family such as the Clutters could have been murdered in cold blood. Who would want to commit such a horrible crime? What could the killer’s motivation be? Capote develops a portrait of the murderer as the product of the murderer’s upbringing, suggesting that bad circumstances can produce bad people.

Citing the opinion of a psychologist who examines Perry, Capote explains that the murders happen because of the relationship between Perry and Dick. Without the other, neither would have murdered. Chance teams Dick with a cellmate who happens to have worked for the Clutters, yet the novel connects events and people in a way that suggests that the Clutter murders were, if not predictable, somehow inevitable. The investigators solve the murder mystery halfway through the novel, but Capote keeps in the reader’s mind from beginning to end the mystery of how, in a larger sense, such evil intrudes into the Clutter world, a world of control, self-discipline, religious faith, and dedication to hard work. The world that Dick and Perry create for themselves subjects them to the authority of others. Feeling victimized, they take revenge by victimizing others. Their only power is violence, and the only order they know is disorder.

Another of the novel’s fictional characteristics is the arrangement of the material so that the murders take on a universal significance. In the Clutter world, one must believe in and adhere to the principles of justice and humanity. One is responsible for one’s actions. God and nature are both just and predictable. The murders seem senseless in this world; one learns that an evil can strike down anyone at any time, and no one can fathom the justice of it all. Capote ends his novel with an image of Al Dewey leaving the graveyard where the Clutters are buried. Behind him is “the whisper of wind voices in the wind-bent wheat.” Behind him is the mystery that the voices do not explain.

Further Reading

1 

Bloom, Harold, ed. Truman Capote. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2003. Collection of critical essays interpreting Capote’s works, including “’Psychological Accidents’: In Cold Blood and Ritual Sacrifice” by Brian Conniff, “Making Sense of Contemporary Reality: The Construction of Meaning in the Nonfiction Novel” by Horst Tonn, and “Capote’s In Cold Blood: The Search for Meaningful Design” by John Hollowell.

2 

Capote, Truman. Truman Capote: Conversations. Edited by M. Thomas Inge. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1987. Compilation of more than two dozen interviews, including those conducted by journalists Gloria Steinem, George Plimpton, and David Frost. Among other subjects, Capote discusses the writers who influenced him, his methods of research and writing, and his personal reverence for the craft of authorship.

3 

Clarke, Gerald. Capote: A Biography. New York: Ballantine, 1989. Well documented from primary sources, including seven years of interviews with Capote. Discusses the writing of In Cold Blood.

4 

Guest, David. “Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood: The Novel as Prison.” In Sentenced to Death: The American Novel and Capital Punishment. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1997. Examines the representation of capital punishment and the American criminal justice system in five novels, including In Cold Blood. Guest sets these novels within the history of crime and punishment in the United States.

5 

Long, Robert Emmet. Truman Capote, Enfant Terrible. New York: Continuum, 2008. Critical biography, in which Long places Capote’s works within the context of the author’s life and times. Long demonstrates how Capote’s tragic life resulted in the gothic nature of his prose. Chapter 7 is devoted to a discussion of In Cold Blood.

6 

Malin, Irving, ed. Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood”: A Critical Handbook. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1968. A compendium of essays that focus on In Cold Blood and the critical reaction to the novel. Includes articles that place In Cold Blood in the context of Capote’s other works. Of special interest is George Plimpton’s interview with Capote; the interview gives excellent perspective to Capote’s novel and literary intent, his relationship to the events and people in the book, and how he worked the material into what he calls a “nonfiction novel.”

7 

Nance, William L. The Worlds of Truman Capote. Briarcliff Manor, N.Y.: Stein and Day, 1970. Two chapters are devoted to In Cold Blood, the first chapter placing the novel in Capote’s career, the second chapter offering a critical study of the novel.

8 

Reed, Kenneth T. Truman Capote. Boston: Twayne, 1981. Surveys Capote’s short fiction, novels, and efforts at reportage, which include work on In Cold Blood. Reed ends with a study of Capote’s style, his themes, and the influences on his writing.

9 

Waldmeir, Joseph J., and John C. Waldmeir, eds. The Critical Response to Truman Capote. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1999. Compilation of previously published reviews and essays, as well as some essays written for this collection. Includes pieces by literary critics Eric Bentley, Leslie Fiedler, Diana Trilling, and Kenneth Tynan, among others. Several of the articles focus on In Cold Blood and the nonfiction novel.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Morris, Bernard E. "In Cold Blood." Masterplots, Fourth Edition, edited by Laurence W. Mazzeno, Salem Press, 2010. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=MP4_19709820000140.
APA 7th
Morris, B. E. (2010). In Cold Blood. In L. W. Mazzeno (Ed.), Masterplots, Fourth Edition. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Morris, Bernard E. "In Cold Blood." Edited by Laurence W. Mazzeno. Masterplots, Fourth Edition. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2010. Accessed December 14, 2025. online.salempress.com.