Hannibal

thomas harris

Horror lit's head chef Harris serves up another course in his Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter trilogy, and it's a pièce de résistance for those with strong stomachs. In the first book, Red Dragon (filmed as Manhunter), Hannibal diabolically helps the FBI track a fascinating serial killer. (Takes one to know one.) In The Silence of the Lambs, he advises fledgling FBI manhunter Clarice Starling, then makes a bloody, brilliant escape.

Years later, posing as scholarly Dr. Fell, curator of a grand family's palazzo, Hannibal lives the good life in Florence, playing lovely tunes by serial killer/composer Henry VIII and killing hardly anyone himself. Clarice is unluckier: in the novel's action-film-like opening scene, she survives an FBI shootout gone wrong, and her nemesis, Paul Krendler, makes her the fall guy. Clarice is suspended, so, unfortunately, the first cop who stumbles on Hannibal is an Italian named Pazzi, who takes after his ancestors, greedy betrayers depicted in Dante's Inferno.

Pazzi is on the take from a character as scary as Hannibal: Mason Verger. When Verger was a young man busted for raping children, his vast wealth saved him from jail. All he needed was psychotherapy--with Dr. Lecter. Thanks to the treatment, Verger is now on a respirator, paralyzed except for one crablike hand, watching his enormous, brutal moray eel swim figure eights and devour fish. His obsession is to feed Lecter to some other brutal pets.

What happens when the Italian cop gets alone with Hannibal? How does Clarice's reunion with Lecter go from macabre to worse? Suffice it to say that the plot is Harris's weirdest, but it still has his signature mastery of realistic detail. There are flaws: Hannibal's madness gets a motive, which is creepy but lessens his mystery. If you want an exact duplicate of The Silence of the Lambs's Clarice/Hannibal duel, you'll miss what's cool about this book--that Hannibal is actually upstaged at points by other monsters. And if you think it's all unprecedentedly horrible, you're right. But note that the horrors are described with exquisite taste. Harris's secret recipe for success is restraint. --Tim Appelo

Genres horrorfictionthrillercrimemysterymystery thrillersuspensenovelsadulthorror thriller

0 pages, Audio Cassette

First published June 8,1999

Series

Hannibal Lecter

Literary awards

bram stoker award, puddly award,

Places

the united states of america, florence tuscany,

This edition

Format: 0 pages, Audio Cassette
Published: June 1, 2004 by Random House Audio Price-less
ISBN: 9780739312469
ASIN: 0739312464
Language: English

Characters More characters

Hannibal Lecter

Forensic psychologist, culinary gourmet and a cannibalistic serial killer.Born into an aristocratic family in Lithuania in 1933, orphaned along with his beloved sister Mischa, in 1944 when a German Stuka bomber attacks a Soviet tank in front of their fore...
Clarice Starling

Raised in a small town in West Virginia with her father, a town marshal. When she was about 10 years old, her father was shot when responding to a robbery; he died a month after the incident. Her mother subsequently worked as a hotel chambermaid, but was ...