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Loading... Red Dragon (original 1981; edition 2009)by Thomas Harris
Work detailsRed Dragon by Thomas Harris (1981)
None.  shanaqui | Apr 9, 2013 |  3.5 Stars This book was everything it promised to be - creepy, thrilling, fast paced - I just couldn't put it down. It was mindblowing. It was scary. I think I will have nightmares for weeks because of this book. But, it didn't meet my expectations. I would have gladly given this book five stars - but there was something more that I wanted from it and it failed to deliver. I loved the idea of this book - the whole thing was very, very disturbing. But the writing felt off most of the time. Like the author didn't know how to express this idea in words to do it enough justice. And that was exactly what happened. I will definitely stick with this series - the whole concept of Dr. Lecter is enough to blow my mind away. Not recommended to the faint of heart. (  ) shayanasha | Apr 5, 2013 | Another LJK Book Club pick. (  ) JennyArch | Apr 3, 2013 | I first read this book when I was a teenager, and it scared me; recently, I picked it up again, and it was just as terrifying and delightful as before. Thomas Harris is my hero, and he made me love the villain, and the complexity that one needs to have. Great book that I can't recommend enough. If I could give it 100 stars, I would!!!!! (  ) Tina_Glasneck | Apr 2, 2013 | loaned to pop ( ) velvetink | Mar 31, 2013 |
 But I have to acknowledge my gut response to Mr. Harris's thriller. It hits us in our outrage, and titillates the part of us all that would like to get rid of evil with a gun.
Amazon.com Amazon.com Review (ISBN 0440206154, Mass Market Paperback)Lying on a cot in his cell with Alexandre Dumas's Le Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine open on his chest, Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter makes his debut in this legendary horror novel, which is even better than its sequel, The Silence of the Lambs. As in Silence, the pulse-pounding suspense plot involves a hypersensitive FBI sleuth who consults psycho psychiatrist Lecter for clues to catching a killer on the loose.The sleuth, Will Graham, actually quit the FBI after nearly getting killed by Lecter while nabbing him, but fear isn't what bugs him about crime busting. It's just too creepy to get inside a killer's twisted mind. But he comes back to stop a madman who's been butchering entire families. The FBI needs Graham's insight, and Graham needs Lecter's genius. But Lecter is a clever fiend, and he manipulates both Graham and the killer at large from his cell. That killer, Francis Dolarhyde, works in a film lab, where he picks his victims by studying their home movies. He's obsessed with William Blake's bizarre painting The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun, believing there's a red dragon within him, the personification of his demonic drives. Flashbacks to Dolarhyde's terrifying childhood and superb stream-of-consciousness prose get us right there inside his head. When Dolarhyde does weird things, we understand why. We sympathize when the voice of the cruel dead grandma who raised and crazed him urges him to mayhem--she's way scarier than that old bat in Psycho. When he falls in love with a blind girl at the lab, we hope he doesn't give in to Grandma's violent advice. This book is awesomely detailed, ingeniously plotted, judiciously gory, and fantastically imagined. If you haven't read it, you've never had the creeps. --Tim Appelo (retrieved from Amazon Wed, 02 Jan 2013 21:46:00 -0500) Will Graham's unusual, fearful ability to project himself into the minds of psychopaths puts him on the trail of Francis Dolorhyde, whose bizarre and bloody murders of two suburban families have been triggered by his viewing of a William Blake watercolor.… (more) (summary from another edition) |
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Wikipedia in English (1)
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I'm glad I finally started reading these books. Hannibal Lecter is quite pervasive, culturally: even without reading the books I knew about him. He's the main attraction of the book, I think, at least now in retrospect, because he's so incomprehensible and fascinating and so much is alluded to without explanation -- like his capture, and what exactly he did.
There were some other particularly interesting parts, if only personally -- like the blind woman, Reba -- but mostly I was reading it for Hannibal. I'm glad this one wasn't too grotesque: there were some bits I didn't like, but it wasn't like The Mermaids Singing. (