With a few notable exceptions, true-crime literature has lately resembled what you get when you send a cub reporter to a lurid freak show. It goes like this: A detached and usually mercenary author parachutes into the scene of the crime – often after an uncomfortably long interval – and pieces together the story from court transcripts, interviews and a few grisly photos.
And the result has generally been fodder for a mass market whose book-shopping starts with a surreptitious glance at the grisly photos printed in the middle of the paperback.
But then there are those exceptions. Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood” was the seminal, postmodern true- crime tale. Vincent Bugliosi’s “Helter Skelter” was the first great true crime-insider blockbuster. Each shares one thing: A “true” ending that isn’t any ending at all, but a gateway to unanswered questions about humanity we might never answer.
Comes now Robert Rivard’s “Trail of Feathers.” Aptly labeled a “true crime/memoir,” it’s not just one story of crime and punishment, but also an exploration of deeply hidden personal secrets, bonds between men, the nature of contemporary journalism, cultural differences, the nature of justice and, ultimately, what one editor believed he owed a friend and reporter.
In December 1998, San-Antonio Express-News reporter Philip True, 50, disappeared on a solitary hike into a Mexican wilderness. It was to be the Mexico City correspondent’s last great adventure before the birth of his first child, but he also hoped it would provide material for a story he desperately wanted to write about Mexico’s isolated Huichol Indians:
“True described a world unknown to his editors or readers. He seemed gripped by the possibility of walking out of the late 20th century commotion of Mexico City and, all alone, entering a place lost in time.”
Author Rivard – then and now editor of the Express-News – joins a small search party that plunges deep into the alien region. Miraculously, he follows a trail of downy feathers from True’s sleeping bag to a shallow grave where they find his decaying body. He had been murdered.
Rivard’s search doesn’t stop in that rugged gorge, even as Mexican authorities arrest two Huichol Indian suspects in the killing, setting in motion a labyrinthine trial process. Delving deeply into True’s past, Rivard finds both unnerving secrets and peculiar similarities between himself and True. The perverse rhythms of Mexican justice add a final, disturbing twist to Rivard’s story.
Rivard, a former foreign correspondent, writes clearly and sensitively with impeccable and voluminous research. He imbues common stories of human frailty and triumph with an engaging universality, and he brings often unfathomable issues of international relations and cultures in conflict to the human level. More important, he has submitted a far more intimate true-crime book than the market has seen in many years. He understood he was a part of this story, and he accompanies the reader every step of the way, holding a hand when necessary.
Another failing of contemporary true-crime writing has been its tabloidy texture, valuing blood splatters over social studies. “Trail of Feathers” deftly explores the effects of a single choice as they ripple outward. Philip True’s ill-fated journey set in motion several other journeys, some of which have not yet ended.
That might be an uncomfortable conclusion for mass-market true-crime fans, but it’s real. It’s true.
Ron Franscell is a newspaperman and novelist.
Trail of Feathers
By Robert Rivard
Public Affairs, 411 pages, $27.50
