True Crime

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This is not one of those modern works that mingle fact with fiction. All the events and conversations I’ve described here were either witnessed by me or reported to me by one or more of the participants. That said, the reader will quickly become aware that I have not restricted myself to the description of events and conversations alone. This story would not be complete without at least some reference-and sometimes a lot of references-to people’s inner thoughts, feelings and motives. And, where I’ve sought to describe such things, I confess a certain amount of deduction has necessarily come into play. That is, I’ve had to guess sometimes at what was going on in people’s heads.

The reason for this is obvious. Excluding maybe God, there’s only ever one witness to a person’s inner life. When that witness is not self-aware or is untrustworthy or is deceased, it becomes very difficult to get at the truth about his emotional world. So with the blind, the dishonest and the dead-and I encountered all three in researching this-I’ve recorded my own impressions. Sometimes I’ve made these deductions explicit, often I hoped the context made them so. In the end, the reader will have to measure the degree to which my understanding of individual human nature is biased or flawed.

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