“Try to say ‘grandmother,’” Brother Buddy said. The Tooth Fairy is a sick and monstrous creation that you nevertheless grow to understand a little bit-which makes him all the more frightening. Graham piecing together how the Tooth Fairy chooses victims is logical and inspired.īut the book belongs to Dolarhyde, with his Grandmother’s snaggletoothed dentures, his Gothic childhood, his brief happy romance with the blind Reba McClane (a great character in her own right).
Lector’s advice (“Have you seen blood in the moonlight, Will? It appears quite black”) is sinister without seeming supernatural. The forensic details are expertly deployed. The book was made into a great Michael Mann film ( Manhunter), a well-cast but underwhelming Brett Ratner film, and the third season of Hannibal.
Noir omnibus) and impressed Ian Rankin (“I was in thrall to Thomas Harris” from a Daily Mail interview).īy now, much of Red Dragon has become cliche-the killer behind bars assisting the detectives, the serial killer with a sad past, the intrepid cop who’s a little too similar to the people he’s chasing.
Red Dragon is a book that daunted James Ellroy (“the greatest suspense novel ever written,” he wrote in the intro to his L.A. Will Graham and Francis Dolarhyde commanded my imagination. I didn’t much care about Lector, and reading Red Dragon, I cared even less. Hannibal Lector was a part of the culture by then, parodied in National Lampoon’s Loaded Weapon One among other places. I sought out Thomas Harris’s book immediately. This is a cracking good read from a master storyteller, and even if you've seen one or both movie versions, there's plenty here to keep you on the edge of your seat.It’s a breathless sentence, a Hemingway-esque concatenation of short words and direct actions. He also introduces recurring characters, including Dr Chilton and Jack Crawford, and deftly keeps the tension on the boil as the police and FBI teams struggle to discover the identity of the killer. Although Lecter only appears briefly in this one, Harris sets the stage for the sequels, 'The Silence of the Lambs' and 'Hannibal'. I first read this book many years ago after seeing the Michael Mann film version (Manhunter). Short on clues, the FBI bring in semi-retired investigator Will Graham to help track the killer, but with the murders linked to the lunar cycle, time is running out. Seeking to satisfy his sexual hunger, the self-styled Red Dragon, is already planning the next murder. Lecter is already in jail, but the FBI needs his help to catch the killer of two families. In the first of the Hannibal Lecter books, Thomas Harris introduces his infamous psychiatrist in this tale of a murderous psychopath caught in the grip of a demonic delusion.
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