Hannibal the cannibal makes a cheeky little cameo in the first of the series that would make him famous. A few years have passed since the last time that Will Graham and the famous doctor has spoken, all through the tumultuous events where Graham, then working for the FBI, learns of Dr. Lecter’s extra curricular activities after office hours. Now imprisoned for life in an Insane asylum for the criminally insane, Graham asks for his help to find another serial killer after he has been away living the family life, trying his best to live with the trauma of almost being killed by the deranged criminal standing before him. Ever the uber stressed, sassy, grumpy, and just as morally conflicted about his abilities to understand and sympathize with the worst of human monsters, graham trudges through the murky waters of investigative criminology once more in order to save whomever the killer decides to take into his sights.

It took me four days to finish the 343 page thriller, while the book itself is technically well thought out and the flow between characters is clear and not confusing, I never found myself fully captivated. As much as I wanted to know what happened next, I did not find it difficult to put it down for the night. These are famous characters in the modern lexicon to this day, with both the aforementioned characters appearing in a recent television series covering the expanded stories in between the major novels and of course the very well known movies with the same name as their literary counterparts leaving just as lasting of an impact. With that in mind, the book did a good job in showing us the character’s thoughts as they processed the plot events as how it added to the subtle development as the story progressed. Between Will Graham and the main antagonist taking the centerfold of the narrative one does not suffer the inability of understanding one’s motivations and emotions, their thoughts and conflicting philosophies per their side on the matter. We understand why Graham comes back into the fold in order to help catch the killer even though he suffers with the trauma inflicted upon him by Lecter and we understand why Francis Dolarhyde, through his own abuse and the added factor of mental illness, pursue this avenue of crime, with the majority of the book is told through the perspective of Will Graham this adds a level of subtle continuity when we learn that Graham has an innate ability to understand serial killers and thus it helps him catch them.

SPOILER INCOMING.

There is a poignant scene between the antagonist Dolarhyde and a blind woman, Reba McClane, where he experiences true human connection for the first time in his adult life, and even his whole life, after he takes her to meet a tiger at the local zoo. Neither one bullshits the other for their perceived faults; him towards her blindness and her about his extreme self conscious and antisocial behavior. A victim of severe mental abuse and social rejection by his mother and extended family, Dolarhyde has been alone most of his life and was never able to breach that disconnect of misanthropic sociopath, till Reba. Initially propelled through her consensual (bestowing?) of oral sex, they move to the bedroom where Francis feels the full captivation of human connection while enveloped with Reba. The description provided by Harris paints the most vivid portrayal of overwhelming acceptance in a single sharply imposed moment in contrast of a life full of rejection, abuse, and pain, through the act of sex that I would not even qualify it as a simple sex scene, but rather the zenith of human connection. Mixed in with the ever present threat of violence within Francis’ hive mind, Thomas manages to immediately corrupt that moment of connection with the dark game of tug of war between the developing empathy of Dolarhyde and the mounting volcano of violence that is the baser nature of the characters when you take consider that he has killed two whole families by this point.

An avid fan of the TV series and recently recaptivated by reading I was very much caught gray with this reading. Not bad but not great in any grand way to say it detracts from the text. It filled my evening while it lasted and through past exposure of the aforementioned series and movies, I can appreciate them a bit more than I did before. Some argue that Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs are thriller classics, I don't necessarily full under thaf camp, though they should undoubtedly be read as a precursor to deeper and darker materials for those on the quest for the darker trails of human thrillers.

Red Dragon by Thomas Harris