Hannibal - Hardcover

Harris, Thomas

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 038529929X ISBN 13: 9780385299299

Publisher: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, 1999

Synopsis

Invite Hannibal Lecter into the palace of your mind and be invited into his mind palace in turn. Note the similarities in yours and his, the high vaulted chambers of your dreams, the shadowed halls, the locked storerooms where you dare not go, the scrap of half-forgotten music, the muffled cries from behind a wall.

In one of the most eagerly anticipated literary events of the decade, Thomas Harris takes us once again into the mind of a killer, crafting a chilling portrait of insidiously evolving evil—a tour de force of psychological suspense.

Seven years have passed since Dr. Hannibal Lecter escaped from custody, seven years since FBI Special Agent Clarice Starling interviewed him in a maximum security hospital for the criminally insane. The doctor is still at large, pursuing his own ineffable interests, savoring the scents, the essences of an unguarded world. But Starling has never forgotten her encounters with Dr. Lecter, and the metallic rasp of his seldom-used voice still sounds in her dreams.

Mason Verger remembers Dr. Lecter, too, and is obsessed with revenge. He was Dr. Lecter's sixth victim, and he has survived to rule his own butcher's empire. From his respirator, Verger monitors every twitch in his worldwide web. Soon he sees that to draw the doctor, he must have the most exquisite and innocent-appearing bait; he must have what Dr. Lecter likes best.

Powerful, hypnotic, utterly original, Hannibal is a dazzling feast for the imagination. Prepare to travel to hell and beyond as a master storyteller permanently alters the world you thought you knew.

About this title

Review:

Hannibal. Dr Hannibal Lecter. "A brief silence follows the name, always, in any civilized gathering," wrote Thomas Harris at the beginning of his stunning The Silence of the Lambs in 1988. You don't want him in your head, you don't want you in his head. Now, a decade later, Lecter is back--ready to take up his place as one of the cult figures of contemporary fiction. Almost a modern myth, in fact, if the scale, and thrill, of the publication of Hannibal is anything to go by. Harris's book is "news": not only "book news" but "real" news, one of the biggest publishing events of the decade in terms of print run (one million copies worldwide), film rights (Hollywood has paid six million dollars for the book: Anthony Hopkins and Julianne Moore will star) and cultural cachet.

The serial killer--like his counterpart, the psychologist-profiler--is a figure for our times; "In the contemporary mind," as one psychoanalyst, Christopher Bollas, has put it, "the serial killer is the statement of evil". Psychiatrist and killer, Lecter gives a peculiar twist to that evil (and Harris has always been interested in the precarious division between killer and cure). In Red Dragon, published in 1981, Will Graham was one of the first of the fictional profilers thinking and feeling his way into the minds of the killers he pursued. Behind bars, Lecter was a charged, but compelling, presence--an enigma who promised to be a key to psychopathic crime if only someone were genius enough to understand him. Jack Crawford tried, and then Clarice Starling. Now, as if in response to those who wanted to know more, comes Hannibal, a novel which constantly threatens to bring Lecter to life through its (sometimes grisly) pages. "Dr. Hannibal Lecter's fingerprint card is a curiosity and something of a cult object": Harris is the one who knows, who has "been there", and takes his readers into Lecter's world of curious courtesy and exquisite taste, sickening cruelty and loving murder. Both Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs were masterpieces of plot and suspense; though complex and plotted, this is rather more "Hannibal's book": no-one who wants to know, and suffer with, Lecter--his past victims, his past life, his strange feelings for Starling--can miss this brilliant piece of mythmaking. --Vicky Lebeau

Review:

"Strap yourself in for one heck of a ride -- it'll scare your socks off."
-- "The Denver Post
"Relentless -- endlessly terrifying."
-- "Los Angeles Times
"Interested in getting the hell scared out of you? Buy this book on a Friday ... lock all doors and windows. And by Monday, you might just be able to sleep without a night-light."
-- "Newsday
Don't miss Thomas Harris's "New York Times bestsellers:
Red Dragon
Black Sunday

"From the Paperback edition.

"Strap yourself in for one heck of a ride it'll scare your socks off." Denver Post
"Relentless endlessly terrifying." Los Angeles Times
"Interested in getting the hell scared out of you? Buy this book on a Friday ... lock all doors and windows. And by Monday, you might just be able to sleep without a night-light." Newsday
Don't miss Thomas Harris's New York Times bestsellers:
Red Dragon
Black Sunday"

"Strap yourself in for one heck of a ride--it'll scare your socks off."--Denver Post

"Relentless--endlessly terrifying."--Los Angeles Times

"Interested in getting the hell scared out of you? Buy this book on a Friday ... lock all doors and windows. And by Monday, you might just be able to sleep without a night-light." --Newsday

Don't miss Thomas Harris's New York Times bestsellers:
Red Dragon
Black Sunday

About this edition

• Publisher: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 038529929X
• ISBN 13: 9780385299299
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 486