[Truman Capote says of writing:] "A writer ought to have all his colors, all his abilities available on the same palette for mingling…. But how?"

"Music for Chameleons," a miscellany of stories, reportage, an extended crime narrative and a few autobiographical snippets, is the result of a search for an answer to that question. The search is described by the author as both perilous and exhausting…. All the more troubling, therefore, to report that the book is disappointing.

The longest piece of writing, "Handcarved Coffins: A Nonfiction Account of an American Crime," is a rambling chronicle of Mr. Capote's friendship and conversations, literary and nonliterary, with Jake Pepper of the State Bureau of Investigation, who suspects a rich rancher of committing multiple murders. Rarely in its length do we explore the interior either of a criminal or of a threatened innocent or man of law. And the experimental...