21; (246) from their visit to the Clutter’s house. As well as being written in a journalistic style, In Cold Blood is written in a documentary style, which switches “…back and forth from the worlds of the Clutter family, and later of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, to the terrible half-world in which the two murderers live” (McCabe, 561). By writing in the documentary style, Capote is able to be specific about the thoughts, feelings, and actions of all of the characters separately, making each character’s situation and point of view clear to the reader. Throughout In Cold Blood, Perry Smith is presented to the reader as a heartless and savage murderer, but during his confession, he says, “I didn’t want to harm the man. I thought he was a very nice gentleman. Soft-spoken. I thought so right up to the moment that I cut his throat” (302), which makes the readers realize that it is not his savage nature that drives him to murder; it is Smith’s mental condition that does not allow him to feel that his actions are wrong. Along with being a journalistic and documentary piece of literature, In Cold Blood can also be classified as a detective story, because of all of the research and detective work that Capote, himself, did in order to write this extraordinary work, and because of all of the detective work incorporated into the plot. Al Dewey is the chief detective in solving the murders and figuring out the murderers. In actuality, Capote’s detective work and research on the Clutter murders parallels Al Dewey’s work in the non-fiction novel. The combination of the journalistic, documentary, and detective styles of writing in In Cold Blood is what makes this work brilliant and masterfully written. Through the use of these three styles of writing, Capote is able to present the factual account of the detective work on solving the murders; the events before, during, an...
