Hannibal (Hannibal Lecter Series #3) Book

Okay, let me confess up front: I loved Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs. Loved them. I enjoyed the movies, too: the movie version of Silence of the Lambs scared the pee out of me, and even so, I didn't want it to end. So, long years later when I finally got hold of a copy of Hannibal, I really, really, wanted to love it, too.

But I didn't.

Well, that's not entirely true. If I pretend that this wasn't a sequel about characters I already know, then I can find some bright spots. The book has some fantastic descriptions of Italy. There are certainly some creepy scenes that gave me the shivers. I was fascinated by the concept of the memory cathedral. And I felt terribly bad for poor Clarice as her world crumbled in around her. The problem is, none of the characters seem remotely connected to the folks we met before.

Hannibal Lecter, an enigma in previous installments, now has a background. It's tragic and horrifying, but is it enough to form the Hannibal we all know? Maybe. But even if it is, do we really have to know the details of why Lecter is who he is? I'm not convinced that this information makes him a more compelling character.

Clarice Starling, whose wagon was hitched to a rising star at the end of Silence, is on the verge of being pushed out of the FBI. She has been overlooked again and again for promotion and is reduced to being scapegoated by talentless superiors.

Jack Crawford, a hero and mentor in the previous books, is now (for the short time he appears here) a liability.

I understand that people change, but come on. So what happened? What changed between the publication of The Silence of the Lambs and the publication of Hannibal? Well, what changed was the character of Hannibal Lecter. In both Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal was a minor (though quite compelling) character. Harris went to great pains to point out that, although clever and extremely cunning, Lecter was not omniscient. There was always an explanation as to how he knew the things he did, and Crawford was equally clever at figuring it out. Enter Jonathan Demme.

When Jonathan Demme made the movie version of Silence, he said that he wanted the audience to believe that Lecter was the smartest man alive. It didn't matter how he knew the things he did'he just knew. And to the credit of both Demme and Anthony Hopkins, it worked. The movie firmly established Lecter's genius, and in the context of the film, it was brilliant: you never have to explain how Lecter gets his information, and his outrageous escape becomes plausible. Besides, the smarter Lecter is the more the audience worries about Clarice. Hopkins' performance firmly established a picture in our minds of who Lecter was and how he worked.

Enter Thomas Harris, trying to write a sequel to a phenomenally popular book, which was also a hugely successful movie. Now everyone thought of Anthony Hopkins when they thought of Hannibal Lecter, and they believed he was the smartest psycho alive. Instead of writing about his own Hannibal, he tried to write about the Demme/Hopkins Hannibal, and that just didn't leave him anyplace to go but over the top, which is a crying shame. The book collapses under the sheer magnitude of what we are expected to accept about these characters and where they end up.