After receiving references from Doctor Dumas and from the head of the Police Forensic Laboratory, for whom he has worked as a volunteer, Lecter was released.
He left France, killing the final member of the group, Bronys Grentz , while on a vacation in Montreal, before returning to his internship in Baltimore. Lecter's drawings led to an internship at Johns Hopkins Medical Center in Baltimore, Maryland, where he graduated with a degree in medicine and eventually settled.
Lecter established a psychiatric practice in Baltimore. He became a leading figure in Baltimore society and indulged his extravagant tastes, which he financed by influencing some of his patients to bequeath him large sums of money in their wills. He became world-renowned as a brilliant clinical psychiatrist, but he had nothing but disdain for psychology; he would later say he didn't consider it a science, criticizing it as "puerile", and comment that most psychology departments were filled with "ham radio enthusiasts and other personality-deficient buffs".
He also mocked the way serial killers were categorized into "organized and disorganized" but wasn't interested in offering an alternative. At some point he bought a cottage where he hid a fake passport and money, anticipating a time as a fugitive. During the mid s in America, Lecter continued his killing spree. During this series of murders, of which he was convicted of, he killed at least nine people and attempting to kill three others.
Mason Verger was one known survivor, having gone through psychiatric counseling with Lecter as part of a court order after being convicted of child molestation, and for viciously raping his own sister, Margot , who also went to Lecter for counseling. Verger invited Lecter to his home in Owings Mills one night after a session, and showed Lecter two caged dogs that he intended to starve and turn against each other. Lecter offered Verger a recreational amyl popper amyl nitrate , but this was actually a cocktail of dangerous hallucinogenic drugs.
He then suggested Verger try cutting off his own face with a mirror shard. Verger complied and, again at Lecter's suggestion, fed most of his face to his dogs and ate his own nose. Lecter then broke Verger's neck with a rope Verger used for auto-erotic asphyxiation and left him to die. Later, the dogs were taken to an animal shelter to have their stomachs pumped, which led to the retrieval of Verger's lips and parts of his forehead; however, the skin graft was unsuccessful.
Verger survived but was left hideously disfigured and forever confined to a life support machine. Benjamin Raspail was Lecter's ninth and final known murder victim in the Chesapeake series before his incarceration. Raspail was a not-so-talented flautist with the Baltimore Philharmonic Orchestra, and it is believed that Lecter killed him because his musicianship, or lack thereof, spoiled the orchestra's concerts; he was also a patient of Lecter's. Lecter would claim to Clarice Starling that the reason for Raspail's death was that Lecter "got sick and tired of his whining" during their appointments.
Raspail's body would be discovered sitting in a church pew with his thymus and pancreas missing, and his heart pierced. It is believed Lecter served these organs at a dinner party he held for the orchestra's board of directors. The president of the board later developed an alcohol problem and anorexia after learning what was in his meal.
Raspail was the former lover of Jame Gumb , who would later be involved in Lecter's life as the serial killer dubbed "Buffalo Bill". Not much is known about most of his other victims in this series or how they were killed. They can be presumed to have been mutilated and in most cases, eaten. Will Graham described Lecter's actions as "hideous". They were likely to have been his patients.
In at least one case, he prepared his victim as an eloquent meal and shared his remains with the victim's fellow musicians. Victims included a person who initially survived, and was taken to a private mental hospital in Denver, Colorado, a bow hunter , a census taker whose liver he ate with "fava beans and a big Amarone", and a Princeton student whom he buried.
Lecter was given sodium amytal by the FBI in the hopes of learning where he buried the student; but Lecter, instead of giving them the location of the buried student, gave them a recipe for potato chip dip, the implication being that the student was in the dip. Jack Crawford, when discussing the MO of Buffalo Bill, implied that Lecter had personal experience of hanging another person, suggesting that Lecter used this against at least one victim. He had trained himself previously by administering self-hypnosis in case he was ever administered hypnotic drugs.
Lecter committed his last three known murders within a nine-day span. In later years, pictures of Lecter's crimes gained a macabre following on the internet. In the novel Hannibal , there are suggestions that Lecter was the serial killer Il Mostro di Firenze. Il Mostro operated in Florence, killing couples in the s and s, arranging their bodies as art tableaux and taking anatomical trophies. There was also an eight-year hiatus, the same length of time Lecter was imprisoned.
However, Lecter was in prison between and Lecter was caught on Sunday 30th March by Will Graham , an FBI Special Agent and profiler who was investigating a series of murders in the Baltimore area committed by a cannibalistic serial killer, and had sought Lecter out after discovering he'd treated one of the victims for two hunting wounds in his leg. When Graham questioned Lecter at his psychiatric practice, he noticed some antique medical books in his office.
Upon seeing these, Graham instinctively knew Lecter was the killer he sought; the sixth victim had been killed in his workshop and laced to a pegboard in a manner reminiscent of Wound Man , an illustration used in many early medical books. Graham realized that the hunting wound that led him to Lecter was similar to one in the illustration, which inspired Lecter to further emulate the illustration. Graham left to call the police, but Lecter crept up from behind and stabbed him with a linoleum knife, nearly disemboweling him.
After Lecter's arrest, Graham was briefly committed to a mental institution and retired upon recovering from his wounds. Lecter was analyzed by police and psychiatrists. He deliberately fabricated some facts about himself, such as his age and that he was sadistic towards animals as a child. He refused a medical check up, as he had utter contempt for medical practitioners. His fingerprints were taken, the card containing the prints from his left hand became a cult object.
After his escape years later, the card was sent around the world and became a collectible. The courts found Lecter insane; this spared him the death penalty.
He was instead sent to the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane for nine consecutive life terms, under administrator Frederick Chilton. Many of the families of his victims pursued lawsuits against Lecter to have their files destroyed. The FBI exhumed the graves of four patients, as well as two wealthy benefactors, who had died under Lecter's care for further investigation into the cause of their deaths, but were inconclusive.
He was nicknamed "Hannibal the Cannibal" in the National Tattler, a tabloid that, thanks to Freddie Lounds, also published unauthorized photos of Graham in the hospital after being attacked by Lecter.
Another officer retired from the FBI after being traumatized after discovering Lecter's basement. Lecter's electroencephalogram EEG showed a highly unusual pattern and, given his history, was ultimately branded "a pure sociopath" by Chilton, although this was because they did not know what to call him.
Many in the field of psychiatry labeled him a "monster". The National Tattler described Lecter's crimes as "unspeakable practices". Lecter, while in custody, was said to be "far too sophisticated" for most forms of psychological evaluation, especially as he enjoyed staying abreast of all of the latest developments in his field.
Since he knew how the tests worked, he could easily come up with the typical answers that would brand him as not being psychologically disturbed, and he also mocked the psychiatrists' attempts to profile him by folding their tests into origami.
Lecter would learn a lot about Chilton, then publish papers to humiliate him. Lecter was considered a prize asset, due to the fact he was a pure sociopath. He was designated as prisoner B Lecter was a model patient until the afternoon of July 8, After complaining of chest pains, he was taken to the infirmary.
After his restraints were removed for his electrocardiogram ECG he attacked a nurse , tearing out an eye, dislocating her jaw, and biting out her tongue and eating it. Chilton would later note that Lecter's pulse never went above 85 beats per minute," even when he swallowed [her tongue].
Following this incident, especially when Barney arrived a year after, Lecter was treated extremely carefully by the hospital staff, often outfitted with heavy restraints, a straitjacket and muzzle, and transported only when strapped to a hand-truck.
After cleaning his cell, the orderlies would secure Lecter to his bed using heavy cloths, so Lecter could exchange his restraints for his meals. His cell was fronted with a double barrier, the first being a wall of standard bars and the second a nylon net stretched across the opening, with a gap between the two too wide for Lecter to reach across. Visitors were warned not to approach the cell, nor give him anything that could either aide escape or to injure. Chilton often showed the photograph of the nurse, partly to warn, partly for shock value.
Despite these high security measures, Lecter managed to create a handcuff key from a pen and a paperclip left in his cell by visitors, both times on Barney's day off. Lecter was eventually deemed sane enough to stand trail, and was found guilty of nine counts of murder. He was sentenced to life in the institution without the possibility of parole. Chilton and Lecter's relationship was marked by mutual hatred; Chilton's status as a psychologist, his mediocrity and inflated self-importance offended Lecter, who often humiliated his keeper; while Lecter's constant mockery and elusiveness infuriated Chilton, who punished him by removing his books and toilet seat.
At the end of Red Dragon, Lecter diagnosed this form of punishment as indicative of the damnation of society by half-measures: "Any rational society would kill me, or give me my books. During the investigation of Buffalo Bill, the two would also discuss Clarice Starling.
During his time in the hospital, Lecter corresponded with many people from the psychiatric world, writing and publishing excellent essays and theories, as long as they were not related to his case. One article he wrote on Surgical Addiction was highly rated. Lecter's mail was enormous when he was first committed, taking an orderly ten minutes to remove staples, but his mail declined over the years.
He would also heavily criticize articles, in one instance he made Dr. Doemling cry after an extremely harsh review. Graham came out of retirement in to offer his insight on the "Tooth Fairy" case and upon arriving at a dead end, went to Lecter for help. Lecter gave Graham some valuable insights into the Tooth Fairy, but upon learning about the case, secretly sent a coded message to the killer, Francis Dolarhyde , to kill Graham and his family which would later result in Graham's permanent disfigurement and decline into alcoholism.
Starling, initially assuming the assignment was related to her studies, ended up getting him to help the FBI in the Buffalo Bill case, a serial killer who was skinning young women. As with the Red Dragon case, Lecter used wordplay and subtle clues to help Starling arrive at the conclusions herself. With Starling, he played a perverse game of "quid pro quo", sharing what he knew of Buffalo Bill in exchange for details of Starling's childhood.
Bilirubin is a pigment found in feces. It is the same color as Chilton's hair, Lecter's hint that the name was fake.
The film adaptation changed the name to "Louis Friend," an anagram for "iron sulfide" - fool's gold. Starling then visited Lecter at his makeshift cell, and he gave her some final clues before making a bloody escape. Using his handcuff key, he slipped his cuffs and brutally killed two police officers during the ordeal. He escaped by making a "mask" from the face of one of the officers, donning the officer's uniform and pretending to be his own still-living victim so that he would be hurried away by ambulance while the authorities hunted for him.
The murdered officer, Pembry, was dressed up to look like Lecter and dropped onto the elevator. After Buffalo Bill revealed to be Jame Gumb was killed by Starling, Lecter sent letters stating he wanted revenge on Chilton for the mistreatment he suffered at the hospital. Chilton soon disappeared, probably killed by Lecter. He also sent a "thank you" note to Barney for how decently he treated him, and gave him a generous tip, and a letter to Starling wishing her well.
He returned to his cottage, where he hid money and another identity. After plastic surgery and the removal of his sixth finger while in Brazil, Lecter eventually relocated in Florence, Italy. Lecter avoided reconstruction of his nose to protect his uncanny perception of fragrances. In Florence, he took the pseudonym "Dr. Fell, Lecter's charisma and expertise won him the recently vacated position of museum curator; Lecter had, of course, murdered the position's previous occupant and buried him in concrete.
Lecter's identity would be discovered by Florence detective Rinaldo Pazzi seven years after his escape from Memphis. Lecter had been going by the false name Dr. Fell and Pazzi, who had been disgraced when he bungled the " Il Mostro " case, saw a chance for redemption when he realized Dr. Fell's true identity. In his efforts to capture Lecter, Pazzi found himself the doctor's prisoner, and he informed Lecter of his plot.
After disemboweling and hanging Pazzi, and killing a Verger henchman, Lecter returned to the United States. Both Verger and Starling would hunt him, hoping to get to him before the other.
Lecter murdered a hunter for meat, which alerted Starling. Lecter was captured by Verger's men, but Starling rescued him. In the ensuing fight, Verger's men shot her with two darts filled with sedatives. Lecter carried her away from the boars and convinced Margot Verger to kill her brother. Lecter left a voice message claiming responsibility for Verger's death. Lecter kept Starling in total isolation during the next few months, subjecting her to various conditioning techniques in order to systematically replace Starling's memories and personality and make her believe she was Mischa.
Then there was Hannibal himself, played by the Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen with a devilish insouciance that differentiated him from the approaches of Cox and Hopkins. This doctor seemed to spring straight from the inferno, all cloven-footed charisma and killer attire.
He certainly ties a mean Balthus knot. The Lecter novels and films often had an unsettling relationship to characters outside the heterosexual norm. The series was a consistent underperformer in the ratings, yet the television network NBC withheld the axe until this year due to the praise it garnered, as well as the relatively cheap licensing fee they paid to air it. The French studio Gaumont primarily financed the show. Was it the ever-evolving approach to storytelling that saw the show morph from a straight procedural in its first year to a psychological character study by its third?
Had Fuller taken his self-described mandate, stated in several interviews, that he and his collaborators were knowingly making 'a pretentious art film' too far? Or perhaps it was a matter of a television auteur extending his ambition well beyond what most audiences were conditioned to expect?
One of the constants in many Hannibal recaps published on entertainment websites was a disbelief that the often bizarre and bloody visions we were seeing aired on a broadcast network and not a pay-cable channel. The most famous portrayal of Lecter was by Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs, for which he won best actor at the Oscars while the film took best picture Credit: Alamy. Lecter should be worried about himself since with a life doing so many wrong things to so many dangerous people, it was obvious that sooner or later, someone from his dark past would catch on him, looking for reckoning.
View all 8 comments. This is that rare case where books are even worse than films, if you can believe it. I don't know whatever possessed me to flip through this series. Thankfully, that entity demon of boredom? So far this is a DNF. Left this unfinished and I don't think I'll ever return to it of my own free will.
Or maybe I will, let's live and see about it. This series felt a bit stupid, stilted, pretentious, even. And he didn't come across as one. Or maybe I'm judging intellect on a scale which includes the humanity factor, or lack thereof? Not sure about that. I didn't like the language. The heroes felt without depth. Or maybe I just don't like this concept due to severely disliking the TV snippets of this that have been irritating me to no end for ages. The cannibal idea made me queasy.
I can't fathom just how this stuff managed to give rise to that fan thing, where people would go on to even watch series on this topic.
It'a goddamn mystery to me. The fact that our protagonist happens to be severely intellectual changes nothing for me.
It doesn't add him any charm or any je-ne-sais-quoi or whatever it was that made this stuff popularish. Personally, I don't give a damn if a cannibal killer is an illuminating person or not. And a true intellectual? Don't think he was. I'm sure such an illuminated thinker might have found some other stuff to eat besides fellow humans, if only to be left alone by the society to pursue their oh-so-deep intellectual endeavours.
The story with Clarice was, uh, nauseating. How do you really craft a supposedly love story or whatever it was even supposed to look like! That's what it truly was, things should be called their own names!!!
And I don't really give a damn about Dr. Lecter's string theory equations was that supposed to make him more likeable, him penning supposedly brilliant time physics while drugging Clarice out of her mind?? It does not make me sympathise with him, not at all.
I'm not rating it so far because it feels worthy of a 1 measly star for the writer's effort and wasted time, nothing else. Still, all those fans, they couldn't have been totally mistaken about this series. Or could they? I'll give it some time to sit with me. Maybe I missed something totally notable and earth-shattering about it and will find it someday.
Hopefully, that will not be that sad day my shrink goes to his one. At this point, it's obvious to me that it was a mistake to read this. Note to self: I neet to be more scrupulous about choosing what I read. Otherwise I'm going to be investing a lot more of my time into stuff I find distasteful! The bathroom was indeed comfortable and furnished with every amenity. In the following days she enjoyed long baths there, but she did not bother with her reflection in the mirror, so far was she from herself.
Over the days and nights there were the conversations. She heard herself speaking for minutes on end, and she listened. Sometimes she laughed at herself, hearing artless revelations that normally would have mortified her.
The things she told Dr. Lecter were often surprising to her, sometimes distasteful to a normal sensibility, but what she said was always true. And Dr. Lecter spoke as well. In a low, even voice. He expressed interest and encouragement, but never surprise or censure. From day to day the bright object changed. The fact they they might have hypnotised each other, or gotten self-hypnotised together or whatever that was, is supposed to make this special, I'm sure.
Q: Dr. Lecter seemed to sense their arrival at an unexplored gallery in her mind. Perhaps he heard trolls fighting on the other side of a wall. Only here we get a gardenful of trolls instead! How unusual. Q: He replaced the teapot with a silver belt buckle. She clapped her hands together like a child. Lecter said. Your father is here. Would you like to talk with him? All right! This is exactly what I say when I see people so fascinated with all the shiny badges of merit, such as Doctor, Professor, President, etc.
This is a travesty of psychology. And 'Dr. Lecter' is no doctor, he might have been one at some point or not! Q: The monster settled back a micron in his chair. Q: Mr. Krendler is joining us for our first course. I'm not going to give the detailed details here but they are extremely nasty. This is probably the worst thing I have ever read. She had college French and Spanish to build on, and she has found she has a good ear. They speak Italian a lot at meal-times; she finds a curious freedom in the visual nuances of the language.
And there are lots of true polyglots out there, who have mastered a lot more languages and don't think it anything fancy. A very lame scene. Q: Their relationship has a great deal to do with the penetration of Clarice Starling, which she avidly welcomes and encourages Sex is a splendid structure they add to every day.
Q: It is hard to know what Starling remembers of the old life, what she chooses to keep. The drugs that held her in the first days have had no part in their lives for a long time. Nor the long talks with a single light source in the room. Good to know kidney failure might not be her next option. Still, I'm not really sure what purpose this achieves, ethic or aesthethic. Are we supposed to conclude at this point that hypnosis brainwashing is good for one's psyche?
For either of them to discover us would be fatal. We can only learn so much and live. View all 9 comments. Hannibal happens to be one of my favorite fictional characters and with this book I became more enamored with him.
Yes, it's twisted but me likes him a lot!! View all 5 comments. I have a theory about this horrible book. They are well-written thrillers with great descriptions and characters. They were both adapted into great movies. They made Thomas Harris a very rich man. I think Mr. Harris made a bet, maybe with a friend or just to himself. He knew that his next novel would be snapped up for big bucks for the screen rights.
He knew he would not get any control over the script. So he dec I have a theory about this horrible book. So he decided to write a book that would basically be un-filmable. It would be so preposterous, such dreck, that it would drive the screenwriters crazy. And Mr. Harris would be laughing all the way to the bank. This theory makes it possible to think that Thomas Harris is talented.
There are other theories that eliminate that possibility. Of course, the publication of Hannibal Rising kind of shot my theory all to hell. I can't believe I was so excited about this book that I rushed out to buy it in hardcover.
I sold it to a used bookstore at the first opportunity. View all 6 comments. Apr 08, Erin rated it really liked it Shelves: movie , april Who knew The Hannibal Lecter series was a love story. What Da Fuck did I just read? I was worried Very worried. I waited over a month between finishing Lambs and starting Hannibal. Hannibal picks up 6 or 7 years after the events of Lambs, Hannibal is in Italy living his best life as a fugitive.
Clarice Starling is still at the FBI but her once promising career has stalled. Hannibal's only surviving victim has put a bounty out on him and he has the money to follow though with it. We finally start to get some background on Hannibal and we are shown a bit of Hannibal's psyche.
The entire book is great but the last pages are bat shit crazy and I'm not sure how I feel about it. The last 3 chapters were the most unsettling in the whole book and if you've read the book you know what I'm talking about. I'm undecided on if I'll watch the movie but probably yes. If you've started the Hannibal Lecter series I recommend reading Hannibal despite what you've heard about the movie. Around the year in 52 books: A book set in a country you'd like to visit but have never been to.
Apr 17, Kerri rated it it was amazing Shelves: most-loved. This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I found this to be the perfect ending to The Hannibal Lecter Trilogy. As soon as I finished it, I knew there would be a lot of people who would NOT be happy with the ending. That's fine, and I understand their points, but I loved it! This book is much more focused on Hannibal Lecter than the previous two - as the title implies.
Clarice and Hannibal have almost been switched around here, in terms of the amount of time each is featured. Clarice is ever present in Hannibal's mind much as he was ever present in hers during the last book. Mason is a horrifying villain, and in the battle between him and Lecter, I was firmly rooting for Lecter.
As I said, I loved the ending. It almost felt like a retelling of the conclusion of Dracula in some ways for me - a large part of me had always felt Mina and Dracula should have ended up together, a kind of twisted happy ever after.
So of course, having Dr. Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling together was my ideal ending. This series as a whole is new favourite of mine - Perfect lockdown reading!
Hannibal Lector is definitely the character we love to hate. View all 26 comments. Sep 03, Stargirl rated it it was amazing. Oh that ending. Gothic horror detective chase story, blends genres with great ease, affirming Harris as a master storyteller- as if we didn't already know.
Don't go in expecting another Red Dragon or Silence of the Lambs. This is a much bigger, far darker experience. It's all in the title people. Silence was the story of Clarice Starling, so there is a lot of hope and innocence to it. A decadent spiral into madness and obliteration.
A glimpse into hell. The quality of the writing is of the highest order, blurring the lines between popular fiction and literature. Ingenious and over the top, a true sequel that shows no mercy. And the ending Sweet God. The author is in charge and he will take you into places, dragging and screaming, that you don't want to know. Only she escaped. View all 4 comments.
It's because you are the answer to Samson's riddle. You are the honey in the lion. At the end of Silence of the Lambs , the good doctor had escaped the clutches of the law, after having treated the local authorities to a grotesque display of Grand Guignol theatre by way of parting gift.
This was a more than fitting, infinitely memorable adieu to the cannibal, who from his first appearance in Red Dragon never was supposed to be a main character, let alone the protagonist. As can be expected, the mere fact of him being no longer confined significantly diminishes the interest the character previously managed to pique.
Locked up, with only his intellect and ingenuity at his disposal to manipulate whatever unfortunate soul he deems worthy, he represented a much more intriguing, insidious creature. One only has to recall that one time he managed to talk a fellow inmate into biting off and swallowing his tongue just by whispering to him at night.
Lecter stood at a distance from her, very still, as he had stood in his cell when she first saw him. We are accustomed to seeing him unfettered now. It is not shocking to see him in open space with another mortal creature. Thank you for proving my point for me, Mr. The problem rested with me, not with the books themselves. With Hannibal though, you get quite a different animal, which initially delighted me. Yet, for being an otherwise accomplished, even highly enjoyable thriller, Hannibal unfortunately ends with a callous betrayal.
Not of the kind perpetrated by one fictional character to another mind you, but by the author to his audience. As endings go, it surely must go down in history as one of the most ill-advised and ignominious. A mere 20 pages. Granted, this dynamic between the two was always there, lurking beneath the surface, but the impossibility of it ever materializing was exactly what made it interesting.
Yet Hannibal ends as a twisted love story, fully consummated, which Harris apparently feels the need to make explicit in detail: "Their relationship has a great deal to do with the penetration of Clarice Starling, which she avidly welcomes and encourages. It's not so much the exploration of Starling as a sexual being that is irksome here previously, she was almost solely focussed on her career, with not much thought given to romantic interactions with men but how she is just undergoing the process, as if she has no agency.
This is a radical departure from the individual established in Silence of the Lambs who, even in her inexperience as a rookie, very much had a mind of her own. That one line is absolutely devastating to this character. It totally goes against all we had come to learn about her.
Above all else, Starling is strong-willed, highly intelligent, determined and has a rock-solid moral compass. Was he under time restraint, his deadline fast approaching?
I'd really love to know the answer to that one. Hannibal is far from being a bad book, and I suggest you do read it, but go in with expectations tempered. Just goes to show that even if the first or so pages were good and some passages even quite excellent, the whole enterprise can be ruined by the subsequent twenty.
It's one of the most delicious of ironies that Thomas Harris - the creator of a famous fictional cannibal - would end up cannibalizing his own work. View all 10 comments. Oct 25, Sufferingbruin rated it did not like it. Lord, what an awful book. Awash in mediocrity from first page to last. It has mediocre characters the same which were so captivating in "Silence of the Lambs" , mediocre dialogue, mediocre scenery, virtually no suspense but a plethora of pointlessly putrid acts , and a meandering narrative that often lacks consistency of time and place.
But don't worry: there's a bleeding HIV-postiive woman holding a baby whose last li Lord, what an awful book. But don't worry: there's a bleeding HIV-postiive woman holding a baby whose last line is "let's swap fluids, bitch" before she's shot to death mid-crime.
There are man eating pigs who are intended to be filmed in the act by people from the porn industry, at the behest of a sub-villain recovering from having his face chewed up by dogs. Thankfully, he gets by with having the tears of children put into his IV. No, that last sentence was not a joke. And of course, our two rivals are back. Clarice Starling gets the worst of it in "Hannibal". She has lost all trace of vulnerability and trepidation so there's nothing to overcome.
In other words, she's lost what made her human in the previous book. Here, she's wizened super-woman; so cynical, so powerful and of course, distant. We don't know why she is all of these things and Harris doesn't seem to care.
There are hints of being passed over at the agency and we can guess from her dour persona that Special Agent Starling is weary of the world but these are only guesses; nothing Clarice says or does leads to inferences one way or the other because it's her turn to play second fiddle. Harris' previous efforts, "Red Dragon" and especially "Silence of the Lambs" are both terrific.
In both, Lecter plays a role small in "Dragon" and of course, much larger in "Lambs" but supporting roles. How much damage can happen when you take on the mind of a killer to catch the killer? Will Graham finds out in a brief visit to Lecter, ostensibly to get information on another serial killer when Lecter memorably calls him out: "You came back to get the smell back, didn't you?
Smell yourself. Which brings us to "Hannibal" and a crucial question after a painful week of reading: What is the theme here?
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