Theodore Weesner’s The True Detective

When I first heard about The True Detective, I was very excited to read it. The book was described as a literary true crime novel and was compared to Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. Having read In Cold Blood fairly recently, I still had its hauntingly good prose and timeless story on my mind. I enjoyed In Cold Blood so much, I was eager to read something as suspenseful and impactful, but I’m not sure that The True Detective lived up to the task.

The True Detective is about a child abduction that occurs in a small town in Maine. The plot line is simultaneously driven by the stories of the abductor and abductee, and the sheriff and child's family in search of the perpetrator and his victim. While In Cold Blood is a literary account of noteworthy actual events, The True Detective is literary fiction of plausible events. And, while Truman Capote methodically captures the timeless themes of fear, violation, and guilt that resound as much today as when the book was written, Theodore Weesner does not succeed in conveying the universality of the issues of family, race, and honesty that he incorporates throughout the text. This failure may be in part due to my impressions that Weesner’s characters are often reduced to stereotypes—possibly the most interesting character, the detective, is typified as a portly, small town lawman with a heart of gold. Instead of feeling like I was reading a classic, I felt like I was reading an artifact of what would have been timely and sensational at the time it was written—the way someone might feel about the racier parts of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in thirty years, which probably won’t seem racy at all by then.

As should be apparent, my main problem with The True Detective is based on its comparison to In Cold Blood—a comparison that, for me, it failed to live up to. In its own right, however, The True Detective was not a bad book. With the exception of the unbearably confusing and lengthy attempt at character development in Part I (I maintain that if these 100 pages or so were simply cut, the book would begin with a much more engaging narrative strategy and the best parts of the novel would be preserved), I was truly compelled to keep reading the story. It was similar to the experience of getting sucked into a Lifetime movie or a Law & Order marathon, and depending on your tastes, these are not necessarily bad things. At the very least, this story serves as a reminder of why we should all teach children not to get into cars with strangers. At most, this book is a steady thriller that keeps you invested in the physical and emotional welfare of all the characters.

Weesner, Theodore. The True Detective. 1987. New York: Astor + Blue Editions, LLC, 2012.