In Truman Capote's non-fiction novel In Cold Blood, the Clutter family murderers, Perry Smith and Dick Hickock, are exposed like never before. The novel allows the reader to gain an intimate understanding of the murderer's past, thoughts and feelings. It describes Smith and Hickock's past in detail, which helps explain the life path they were on until the murder, as well as the thoughts that went through their minds after the murders. Perry Smith was a short man with a large chest. At first glance, “he appeared to be a man of more normal size, a powerful man, with the shoulders, arms, and thick, squatting torso of a weightlifter. [However] when he stood up, he was no taller than a child of twelve years old” (15). What Smith lacked in stature, he made up for in knowledge. Perry was “an enthusiast of dictionaries, a fan of obscure words” (22). As a teenager, he craved literature and loved getting a glimpse of the imaginary worlds he escaped into, because Perry's reality was nothing short of a living nightmare. “His mother [was] an alcoholic [and] had strangled to death on her own vomit” (110). Smith had two sisters and an older brother. Her sister Fern had committed suicide by jumping out of a window and her brother Jimmy followed Fern's example and committed suicide the day after his wife's suicide. Perry's sister, Barbara, was the only one who was normal and had managed to live a good life. These traumatic events left Perry mentally unstable and eventually landed him in prison, where he became acquainted with Dick Hickock, who was in prison for passing bad checks. Dick and Perry became friends and this new friendship changed the course of their lives forever. Hickock immediately noted Perry's strange personality and said there was "something wrong with Little Perry." Perry could be such a child, always wetting the bed and crying in his sleep. And often [Dick] had seen him sitting for hours sucking his thumb. Somehow old Perry was scary as hell. Take, for example, his temperament. He could get angry faster than ten drunken Indians. And yet, you wouldn't know it. He may be ready to kill you, but you would never know it without looking or listening to him” (108). Perry's short fuse and dysfunctional background were the two pieces of the puzzle of Perry's corrupt life that soured and tainted the "final picture ».”.