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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. I whole series is wonderful, except Hannibal Rising. The Silence of the Lambs is very chilling. Hannibal Lector is a genius! ( )Disappointing, to say the least. I heard from someone that Harris wrote this novel after the screenplay for the film, and if this is true, it makes a lot of sense. The novel adds nothing to the movie in terms of connection to characters or insights into themes; this is one of a few rare instances I recommend that one skip the novel and just watch the movie. An excellent novel. Many crime novels with serial killer characters treat the serial killer as a malevolent presence, like something in a horror novel. Harris gives readers something different - an really evil human presence. I saw the movie in 1991, but, didn't like it because of the subject matter: abnormal psych, abberant crime, criminal insanity, serial killers, homosexuality, cannibalism, jails for the criminally insane; etc., to me none of these topics seemed like a basis for entertainment. Just recently, a copy of the book became available to me and I thought I'd try a chapter, later, I read another, then two; about this time, the book started to morph from horror into a police procedural - I was hooked. The next time I picked it up, I read the final 200 pages. Harris is a terrific writer, so many deft touches: capturing images, little things like the puffs of blue smoke when the wheels of the FBI plane touches down, major things like when the swat team knocks on the door of the suspect as the chapter ends, the next opens with Buffalo Bill hearing a knock at his front door which he ignores, but which is followed by a knock at the back door which he answers, it's not the swat team, it's Clair. Wow! This is a wonderfully executed book; the police procedural aspect makes it really impossible to compare with the "Shining", although people do. I don't read horror books any more, but, Stephen King's masterpiece is right up there with Poe's finest and I can't imagine anyone writing a more frightening book than that. It's in a class by itself! f GREAT, great book. I loved this book, the story was fantastic. Makes me want to meet a cannibal. :) no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com (ISBN 0312924585, Mass Market Paperback)The Silence of the Lambs, by Thomas Harris, is even better than the successful movie. Like his earlier Red Dragon, the book takes us inside the world of professional criminal investigation. All the elements of a well-executed thriller are working here--driving suspense, compelling characters, inside information, publicity-hungry bureaucrats thwarting the search, and the clock ticking relentlessly down toward the death of another young woman. What enriches this well-told tale is the opportunity to live inside the minds of both the crime fighters and the criminals as each struggles in a prison of pain and seeks, sometimes violently, relief.Clarice Starling, a precociously self-disciplined FBI trainee, is dispatched by her boss, Section Chief Jack Crawford, the FBI's most successful tracker of serial killers, to see whether she can learn anything useful from Dr. Hannibal Lecter. Lecter's a gifted psychopath whose nickname is "The Cannibal" because he likes to eat parts of his victims. Isolated by his crimes from all physical contact with the human race, he plays an enigmatic game of "Clue" with Starling, providing her with snippets of data that, if she is smart enough, will lead her to the criminal. Undaunted, she goes where the data takes her. As the tension mounts and the bureaucracy thwarts Starling at every turn, Crawford tells her, "Keep the information and freeze the feelings." Insulted, betrayed, and humiliated, Starling struggles to focus. If she can understand Lecter's final, ambiguous scrawl, she can find the killer. But can she figure it out in time? --Barbara Schlieper (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:03 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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