When it comes to Hannibal Lecter, I’m like one of those music hipster douche bags that everyone hates because I’ll snootily declare that I knew about him long before most people did and that he’s sucked ever since he got really famous. I’d read this years before the book of The Silence of the Lambs came out and led to the excellent film adaptation that skyrocketed Hannibal to the top of pop culture villains. Hell, I’m so Hannibal-hip that I’d caught Brian Cox playing him in Michael Mann’s adaptation Manhunter, and I didn’t just see it on VHS like all the other late-comers, I actually saw it in the theater. Twice! (I’m pretty sure this is the literary equivalent of claiming to have seen a band in a bar with eleven other people long before their first record deal.)So after Thomas Harris and Hollywood ran the character into the ground after the second movie, it’s been years of shaking my head and saying, “Man, nothing’s been the same since Anthony Hopkins gave his Oscar acceptance speech.”Since I felt like Harris was just cashing in and had pretty much ruined Hannibal in the process, I hadn’t felt the urge to revisit Red Dragon or The Silence of the Lambs in some time. I was more than skeptical about the NBC prequel TV series Hannibal, but great reviews and the involvement of Bryan Fuller got me to check it out. Not only has it been incredibly good and returned Hannibal Lecter to his creepy best, it’s clever use of events referenced as backstory in Red Dragon had me digging out my copy to refresh my memory. Even better, the show has given me a new appreciation for an old favorite and reminded me what I found compelling about it to begin with.Will Graham was a profiler for the FBI until he was badly injured while identifying a certain gourmet serial killer whose name conveniently rhymes with ‘cannibal’ which certainly made life easier for the people writing tabloid headlines. Will has retired to a happy new life with a wife and stepson in Florida until his old boss Jack Crawford comes calling and asks for help. There’s a brutal new killer dubbed the Tooth Fairy by the cops due to his habit of biting his victims. He’s killed two families after breaking into their homes and seems to be on schedule to do it again at the next full moon.Will is reluctant to come back not just because he’s already been gutted once by a madman. He also fears that trying to think like a mass murderer isn’t the best thing for his mental health. It turns out that his concerns are justified after a tabloid journalist essentially paints a target on his back for the Tooth Fairy. Even worse, Will has to confront the man who nearly killed him and being confined to a cell doesn’t mean that Dr. Lecter can’t still do some serious damage.Even as someone who was on the Hannibal bandwagon for a quarter of a century, it’s shocking to re-read this and realize how small of a part he actually plays in the story. Yes, he’s terrifying and his presence hangs over Will like a dark cloud, but he’s still a supporting player. Francis Dolarhyde (a/k/a The Red Dragon a/k/a The Tooth Fairy) may not have Hannibal’s culinary skills, but he’s one damn scary and slightly tragic villain while Will Graham makes for a damaged but compelling hero in the story.I think one of the things I love best is just how much time is spent on how Will thinks. As a man with extremely high levels of empathy and a vivid imagination, Will’s ability to put himself in someone else’s shoes is a gift and a curse. Thinking like deranged killers has left him questioning if he might not be one of them, and it spills over all his emotions like a toxic oil spill.By understanding their madness, Will can find the logic in their thinking, and it’s following that internal logic that allows Will to find the evidence they need. The breakthrough Will eventually makes is one of my all-time favorite examples of pure detection in the genre. It was in front of the reader the entire time, but it’s such an elegant solution that fits together so perfectly that Harris doesn’t have to engage in obscuring it with red herrings.As a thriller that led to countless rip-offs and even the eventual collapse of the franchise due to it’s own success, it’s been often imitated but rarely equaled.Check out my review of the Hannibal TV series at Shelf Inflicted.Cross posted at Kemper's Book Blog.
"Funerals often make us want sex—--it’s one in the eye for death." (Thomas Harris; Red Dragon)***The character of Will Graham reminded me of myself as I read this novel. "He didn't want a face aimed at him all the time." He described the morgue as a peaceful place, and it is. I've been there. It's place where the dead don't complain. Where the world might smell bad, but the science makes sense.Thoughts:I don't know why people continue to call the smell of blood "coppery." It's not. It smells like the iron that is in it. Rusted iron when the blood gets old. This was one of a few things that bugged me in the prose, but I could let it go.Page 20 (Kindle version), when Will drinks "two fingers of whiskey," it's a small thing, but I would have liked to know what kind of whiskey it was. Would have told me a bit more about him. Throughout the novel, I enjoyed the simplicity of the prose and the natural flow of the dialogue. That's what made this book both an easy/quick read and steady pace.As I read, I thought about how Graham let himself get into the brain of the killer, and how it both bothered and thrilled him. I compared it to those of us who write horror...how we absolutely MUST go into those dark places in order to write our scenes well and fully develop our characters and how...when we emerge from those places...many of us need a cleansing ritual in order to be all right with our world.Another thing I enjoyed that perhaps younger readers wouldn't understand, was the trip back to the 80's. Cigarette smoke inside the diner, old style antacids and headache medicines that no longer occupy modern pharmaceutical shelves, and the absence of cell phones. The very beginnings of computers, the popularity of boilermakers...it was a very different time, the 80's. In the criminal justice system, fingerprints were often hoarded together in large binders, and matching prints to a suspect was an onerous task. These days, CODIS has made it easy to find a set of prints from millions of persons in the system.Forensics: Many of the forensic descriptions were accurate, which is something I enjoyed. From the chemicals described in the breakdown of a wound to the details about bite marks and other aspects of forensic odontology. . . Harris placed an air of believability in his story because it was framed with scientific elements that were true at the time the novel was written. Interesting quote observations early in the story:"You know how cats do. They hide to die. Dogs come home." (p. 33, Kindle)"The Tooth Fairy will go on and on until we get smart or get lucky. He won’t stop.” (p. 39, Kindle, Interesting because of the criminal profiling.)"Men have no confidence in whispers." (p. 47, Mrs Leed's Diary.)“He did it because he liked it. Still does. Dr. Lecter is not crazy, in any common way we think of being crazy. He did some hideous things because he enjoyed them. But he can function perfectly when he wants to.” (p.63, describing Hannibal Lecter.)"Perception’s a tool that’s pointed on both ends.” (p. 179)As someone who has studied criminal profiling, much of what Harris wrote in his novel was textbook for the times. The descriptive actions of sociopaths are taken right out of behavioral science journals. For example, the early start in the sociopath 'career' torturing/hurting/killing animals. . . it's one of the things that seriously creeps me out because even though it's written in a fiction novel it's true in the real world. It's true in a world I'd prefer for my brain not to admit exists.All in all, I've got to say I enjoyed this book. Harris handles multiple POV's well in the story, and he's not overly descriptive on the setting. He uses a lot of dialogue which helped to keep the novel interesting. The one major drawback (for me) was that it was so much like the film, "Silence of the Lambs," that I couldn't help but compare them. I haven't read the novel, but comparing this book with the SotL movie, I found much of it repetitive. Overly redundant. So much so, that I wonder if I would enjoy reading the sequel novels or if I'd find them boring.I'm sure that in the near future, I'll find out.~Q***More reviews and thoughts on fiction by Querus Abuttu @ http://wieldingpenandsword.blogspot.c...
What do You think about Red Dragon (2000)?
I have given this review a lot of thought and I am pretty speechless. Just Wow!!! I have seen all of the movies a very long time ago but never read the books. Going into this was almost like being exposed to these characters for the first time which was great. I liked forming my own ideas of what these characters are supposed to be. After reading this one, I have to give credit to the actors, and casting directors of the movies. Anthony Hopkins, Edward Norton, and Ralph Finnes, played these characters almost exactly as I had pictured them. Thomas Harris did an excellent job of forming flesh and blood characters. While reading I could see them perfectly in my mind and it made this more realistic. It even made those tense scene that much more creepy when it counted. Dolarhyde was one of those characters that you could hate but once we saw a glimpse into his childhood, I began to feel for the character. It was easy to see why he was the way he is, but that still was no excuse for what he did. Dr Lecter was not very present in this book, but in those few scenes that we get to meet him Harris shows us an almost perfect villain. We get a character who is calm, calculating, brilliant, and so creepy I was getting chills just reading the few scenes he was in. When it comes to Will, I really wished I had more to his back story. It seemed like with everything that was mentioned there could have been a book that came before this just on Will's earlier career and his ties to Dr Lecter. Still, even with wanting more to his character I really liked him. I felt I could relate to him in a sense that even though he didn't want to work on this case, he could not live with himself if someone else was killed and he didn't help. Overall this book is defiantly one of my favorites. Harris's writing style was great. He hinted and alluded to things in the future so if you caught them, it was like being let in on a little secret. He also was very good at writing things that allowed you to fill in the gaps. Some writers try this and I am just left feeling jilted because I need more information, or that the author was just being lazy. Harris gave me enough info that when he left a gap I was able to formulate my own theory and feel confident that is what he would have thought too. So very glad I read this book and I will defiantly be checking out the rest of Thomas Harris's books as well.
—Chris
Now that I’ve just finished reading this book, I feel the need to scrub parts of my brain with steel wool for the purpose of removing certain scenes that Thomas Harris has so rudely embedded there. Thanks a bunch Tom!Will Graham has the rotten luck at being really good at his job. He is a profiler for the FBI and while he was on the job catching Dr. Hannibal Lecter, Lecter caught him with a big sharp knife. Will decides that was enough for him, so he makes the wise decision to retire. But nooo! Jack Crawford, Will’s former boss, shows up at his house asking for help on a new case of a new serial killer dubbed the Tooth Fairy, because the creep likes to bite his victims.Here’s how the conversation goes between the two, broken down to its simplest form.Jack: Hey I need your help with a case because you’re the best at what you do.Will: But I don’t want to on account I was nearly gutted last time I helped you.Jack: But you’re really good at your job.tWill: Okay…..since you put it that way, I’ll help.Francis Dolarhyde, or the Tooth Fairy/the Dragon, had a pretty awful childhood (to put it mildly.) Born to a mother who rejects him because of a deformity, a hare lip, then raised by a sadistic grandmother who adopts him for the sole purpose to get revenge on her daughter (not because she loves the boy). As a result of growing devoid of all love, he turns out a little off. Surprise!!Where Dolarhyde has no empathy, Will has too much. This is what makes him a good profiler; he is able to almost ‘become’ the person he is hunting, to understand them.“Graham had a lot of trouble with taste. Often his thoughts were not tasty. There were no effective partitions in his mind. What he saw and learned touched everything else he knew. Some of the combinations were hard to live with. But he could not anticipate them, could not block and repress. His learned values of decency and propriety tagged along, shocked at his associations, appalled at his dreams; sorry that in the bone arena of his skull there were no forts for what he loved. His associations came at the speed of light. His value judgments were at the pace of a responsive reading. They could never keep up and direct his thinking. He viewed his own mentality as grotesque but useful, like a chair made of antlers. There was nothing he could do about it.”That’s pretty dark stuff to deal with and still fight to maintain sanity. When all was said and done I suppose I ‘enjoyed’ this book. But yet I didn’t enjoy it at all. It was very well done……it kept my attention throughout, but I don’t think this type of book is all that good for me. While I love dark books, I seem to need them to be a bit fanciful…….not of the real world. All the stuff that happens in the real world is depressing enough, bombings, school shootings, and kids shooting other kids to death, I feel the need to escape from that. Books like this are just more of that. Oddly enough though, I think the new TV show is fantastic.I now am reading a book about the Tao de Ching (that has an unfortunate title) hoping it will clean up my brain……..Also posted on Shelfinflicted
—Stephanie
Most people were introduced to Dr. Hannibal Lecter by the "Silence of the Lambs" movie, but Lecter's legacy really began with this novel, and it's still my favorite of the series. A book that manages to be terrifying not through gore or supernatural occurrences, but simply by exploring the fractured minds of the criminally insane. People who only saw the Red Dragon movie and didn't read this yet should be warned in advance that Hannibal Lecter has little more than a cameo appearance in this novel...the focus is definitely reserved for the bizarre "Red Dragon" killer and the man trying to catch him. Still, you won't be disappointed, as this book is an amazing read. Will Graham is so haunted, that he becomes far more fascinating and sympathetic than the usual protagonist. And the killer is so disturbing yet so mesmerizing, that the only thing worse than continuing to read more about him would be to NOT continue to read about him! The Hannibal Lecter movies featuring Anthony Hopkins were amazing, but for me, this book still trumps then all.
—David "proud member of Branwen's adventuring party"
